CSAS Member Rick sets up his telescope
CSAS Outreach Volunteers put on a star party for the 4th grade classes of Rachel Embry and Helen Wing at Broadmoor Elementary. The sky was wonderfully clear and the temperatures hovered right around freezing and a tad below. All in all a beautiful night for stargazing! Rachel Embry, helped set up the event through Rick Meinig, who is a CSAS member and Jim West, CSAS’s Outreach Coordinator.
CSAS members in attendance were Vicky, Jim, Bruce, Rick and myself. The night started with the kids in the classroom getting a little star education from Jim, Bruce & Rick then it was out to the telescope to see what there was to see! Rick’s wife was on hand to warm everyone up with hot cocoa… YUM!
Towards the end of the event, the cub scout troop (around 10 scouts and 4 adults) that was meeting in the school came out to see what we were doing and of course we invited them to have a look. All in all, we had close to 50 people enjoying the night sky.
Orion’s nebula was, as always, spectacular. Mars was where it should be, that nice bright red “star” in the east. Andromeda galaxy also made it’s appearance. The Pleides, Gemeni, Betelgeuse, Sirius. Someone found M1 (The crab nebula) and M13 (Great cluster in Hercules). The moon was very pretty with the “earthshine”…. a nice crescent with the shadowed part of the moon nicely visible with the telescope due to that earthshine. Probably the prettiest moon I’ve seen in a while. Naked eye, it looked like a cheshire cat’s grin!
Thanks Broadmoor Elementary for lettng us share the night sky with you!
There are some more pictures that I took before it started, while we were setting up. “Good” camera’s battery was dead so these were taken with my cell phone – so no ability to take pictures after dark. Oh well….
