Despite some cloudy skies, the NC Museum of Art, RAC and the Morehead Planetarium held a stargazing event, Friday August 15th, on the museum’s park grounds. Over 250 people attended and patiently awaited breaks in cloud cover to tour the night sky.
RAC Member Jim M Setting Up For Observing
By 9-9:30, we could view Saturn and Mars and later on other portions of sky opened up but never totally cleared off. We were able to show our guests globular clusters M3, M13, the M57 Ring Nebula and some of the Milky Way open star clusters like M11 and M8. By 11, we were able to dig the Andromeda galaxy, M31, out of the muck for some guests. Everyone had a lot of great questions.
Many thanks to club members who came out despite the cloudy skies – Mike K, Matt and Jack L, Ian H, Jim M, Ann M, Frank W, Brian R, Doug L and Chris M. And thanks to NCMA staff for doing a great job organizing this event and transporting our gear out on the museum park grounds next to the pavilion. This was a fun event that we hope to do again under better skies.
