Star Gazers Have First Meeting

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Glacial Lakes State Park

Star Gazers Have First Meeting

Glacial Lakes State Park

Tuesday, 27 April 2010 08:02

Report on the April 17th Star Party

Great skies, and new and familiar faces made for a fun time at our first star party of the 2010 season at Glacial Lakes State Park!

We had first-timers (with us, at least) who brought a nice 12" SCT with 2" eyepieces. It's always great to have more 'scopes at the star parties. We also had visitors from Two Harbors - quite a drive, but I think we made it worth thier time!

It's always disconcerting when it's been crystal clear all day long and then while you're driving to the park for the star party, the clouds start rolling in. But sunset came at 8:11, and then the clouds went away and it was pretty clear the rest of the night.

We looked at quite a few things: early on we took a look at Saturn and a few of its moons, and Mars and Venus. The moon is always best looked at when it's in a crescent phase - we identified several of the large craters on the moon. We also looked at the galaxy pair M81 and M82 in in Ursa Major (the Great Bear, which is what the Big Dipper is part of), and M13, the Hercules Cluster in the constellation - you guessed it - Hercules.

There were a number of other things we looked at as well, but as the night went on it got fairly cool. We decided it was probably time to go when we noticed that the dew on our plastic star chart was icing up!

Thanks everyone for a great time - the people at the events are just as exciting and interesting as the things we look at in our equipment! We hope to see you next month!

Next Star Party Saturday, May 15th

Come out for a great evening of viewing! Sunset is at 8:46pm. We'll be there to start setting up about 1/2 hour before that.

Once again, Mars and Saturn will be out and high in the sky, so if you missed us last month, you'll have another chance to look at Saturn's rings again. The moon will be a thin sliver of a crescent, so that will be interesting to look at as well.

Come on out and join us!

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