Source – A KQED Multimedia Series Exploring Northern California Science, Environment and Nature: http://www.kqed.org
Some of the most passionate astronomers don’t even need to leave their own backyards. QUEST meets the amateur stargazers in the Bay Area who are making important observations about the cosmos and inventing tools at home to do it.
This weekend we had our Monthly Public Star Party at Observatory Park on Saturday.
The weather cooperated with us again for the 2nd month in a row the weather will start out cloudy windy and threating rain. Then the Sun goes down and the clouds go away, and tada it clear. I think this is the reason why we have had such low turnouts the last two month. People see its cloudy and think it’s going to be a bad night. I’m real glad it worked out. Neil from our group brought out his 30 inch dob to share with everyone. You can see it at this link in our gallery under star parties July 17, 2010 Public Star Party Wow M13 looks like you could almost count ever star in it. Then Jupiter oh me oh my gosh……
We had a wonderful day at Observatory Park on Saturday June 19th. At about 3:30pm we announced the the winner of The Brighton Astronomy Essay Contest.
The contest was open to all current Brighton High School and Prairie View High School students. We received four entries from Brighton High School.
Dori was declared the winner by The Brighton Astronomy Group, and was awarded with a Computerized and Motorized Meade 4.5” Reflector Telescope. With here paper titled “What’s in a name.”
Dane a runner up with his paper on “Black Holes” received a soft sided brief case with a bunch of Astronomy Goodies and videos.
Later that day the Bromley Creek Sub-Division hosted their yearly Picnic the School 27j had a Ice Cream Social.
For a day that started off mostly cloudy you could not ask for a better start. We thought we might get clouded out for the rest of the night. With astronomy you have to have patience and perseverance. This night it paid off. By 9pm the sky was mostly clear, and a few hours later it was a beautiful night until about 12 am when we must have hit the dew point. We were able to see the Moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn, the Ring Nebula, and several globular clusters. We also demonstrated the Celestron Sky Scout.
Check out some the pictures in the Gallery under star parties, then Bromley Creek HOA 2010.
Hey Stargazers! It has been quite a while since I posted – but I wanted to give everyone a heads up that Brighton Astronomy Group is now registered with Galilean Nights! The same weekend as our Oct 24th star party clubs and organizations around the world will be gathering once more to celebrate the work of Galileo by pointing our scopes to Jupiter and the stars. Don’t forget we’ll have the replica of Galileo’s telescope at the star party so you can see what he did 400 years ago.
Visit http://www.galileannights.org for more information of Galilean Nights.
See you all on Oct 24th!!!
Adam
This is probably the best site around,at 9200ft and 50 miles from Larimie it is super dark! All 198 people were very friendly and willing to share views all 4 nights I was there.I camped next to a 16 inch Astrosystems and an 18 inch Starmaster with go to.Really nice scopes so I was giving them challenge objects every night.One person let me use his 25 inch Obsession for about an hour once he realized I knew my way around and was an advanced observer.I saw some old friends and made some new ones. I had many people wanting to look through my classic orange C-11 and I gave quite a show.I hunted down extremely tough objects that most thought would be impossible in an 11 inch. This is one star party that I highly recommend.The drive is about 165 miles from Brighton. Take care.Mark Spalding.
Come an enjoy an evening under the stars with us on Saturday June 27th at our Observatory Park located at 22nd and Bromley Lane. Since it is around the summer solstices, the sun will set about 8:30pm and will not be dark until about 9:30pm.
Our star parties are free, every one is welcome to come and enjoy an evening under the stars with us. If you have a telescope or binoculars and would like help with them, we will have someone in the group that can help you out. You do not need to have a telescope or binoculars to be part of the group, you can view through ours. We will also be presenting educational outreach lectures to.
Looks like the only thing we will be looking at tonight is the bellys of clouds tonight, again. There for I have canceled the Dark Sky for tonight.
So far it look like we might beat the weather for this satruday.
I realy enjoy being out at Barr Lake, it is so much darker, and it fun to hear and sometimes see the wild life to.
Can’t wait to get the telescope out again….
