2015 State Wide Star Party

Each April, as part of the North Carolina Science Festival, dozens of State Wide Star Parties are held.  This year was no different.  The Raleigh Astronomy Club supported 4 different star parties this year:

• Howell Woods, Four Oaks – April 18
• New School Montessori Center, Holly Springs – April 21
• Annie Louise Wilkerson Nature Preserve Park, Raleigh – April 24
• Prairie Ridge EcoStation, Raleigh – April 24

A brief review of each event:

Howell Woods

This was a day and evening event.  The afternoon and evening skies turned out to be mostly cloudy with a couple of light sprinkles of rain in the early afternoon.  However, there were periods throughout the day that were adequate for showing people the Sun in the afternoon and (primarily) Jupiter and Venus in the early evening.  We had ‘white light’ views of the Sun with 12- and 8-inch dobs.  We also had an Orion ED 80 refractor with a Day Star H-alpha filter that provided views of a couple of prominences plus interesting surface detail in the vicinity of the sunspots.  The views of the Sun, of the 72% illuminated Venus, and of Jupiter and its satellites thrilled our visitors.  We ended the day around 9:30 PM when the clouds really took over the sky.

For solar observing we had approximate 100 visitors.  For evening observing, we had approximately 60 visitors.

New School Montessori Center

We had an early start for the New School Montessori Center event.  Visitors started to gather around the scopes around 30 minutes before sunset.  The only views afforded to us at that early hour were of the 3 day old crescent moon and Venus.  As dusk turned to dark, we were able to then get great views of Jupiter.  The skies were mostly clear during our observing time though clouds began to roll in at the end of the event at 9pm.  We had and 60 plus students, parents and siblings in attendance and all were thrilled by the views provided.

Annie Louise Wilkerson Nature Preserve Park

We had a great event at Annie Wilkerson Nature Park in support of the Statewide Star Party.  There were probably about 100 in attendance.  Several of those were a school group from Pinehurst in Raleigh to compete in a science Olympiad.

RAC kicked off the evening with an indoor presentation, “Getting Started in Astronomy.”  It was standing room only for this presentation.  For observing, there were high clouds throughout the night, but nothing that prevented views of the moon, Jupiter, and Venus.  A bit later in the evening several scopes also pointed to M81/M82 for those with better visual acuity.

The clouds really started to roll in about 10:15pm and we started to clean up.  It was pretty good timing as you could feel and see the humidity building in.  Everything in the sky became increasingly obscured, so we wrapped up just in time.

Prairie Ridge Eco-Station

We had a great time last night observing at Prairie Ridge for the State Wide Star Party.  We had 6 astronomers.  The staff at Prairie Ridge Eco-Station recorded 184 in attendance and we all had long lines at all of our scopes. The crowd was highly interactive and we got a lot of great questions. We had at least 4 astronomy teachers there plus a bus load of kids from a Greenville, NC High school on a science field trip.  All-in-all it was a very successful evening with lots of people keenly interested in Astronomy and a loads of enthusiastic young people who were fascinated by the night sky.

Observing was soft due to high clouds but we did observe the following objects: Orion Nebula, Earth’s Moon, Venus, Jupiter with its 4 Galilean Moons and the Great Red spot, as well as, the ISS as it passed West to South at 25 Degrees altitude at 8:38PM.  We did try to glimpse a view of the Leo Triple of galaxies but the due to the high thin clouds, poor seeing conditions and the glare of the moon, we could not visually see them even in an 11” scope.

The crowds, which started around 7:30PM were over with by 10:00PM and we packed up at left about by 11:00PM.