Alumni stargazing

Saturn and Largest Moons - June 15, 2012 ~ 10 PM EDT. Simulation via "Gas Giants" iPad app.

It is Alumni Weekend at Hiram College this weekend and Friday night featured observing for attendees at Stephens Memorial Observatory. The first visitors arrived at our door during bright twilight and it was a good many minutes before Spica and nearby Saturn began to glimmer in the southern sky. There was a thin veil of cloud high above the region but, as night fell, the veil lifted and revealed decent views of the ringed world. About 27 alumni and family members took a look at Saturn and several of its moons over the course of the warm, 70+ degree evening. Though the seeing was not nearly so good as May's public session, it was still adequate to display the "F" Ring, Saturn's shadow falling across its rings, and hints of color cloud belts. We viewed at three different magnifications but visitors most enjoyed the detail that emerged in our new Brandon eyepieces, particularly 16mm optic that delivered 208X magnification. Common comments were: "Oh, wow!" and "Oh, that's a picture!" which are not unlike what we hear in public sessions. The crowd thinned out rapidly as folks drifted off to social functions but three stayed behind. The sky was dark and at its peak around 10:30 so I swung the big W&S refractor around to find M57 -- the Ring Nebula in Lyra. In short order I picked it up, an object I describe as a gray donut. One alum, in biology, said it reminded her of the shape of a red corpuscle of blood -- actually an apt comparison! We also took a look at Antares blazing away in constellation Scorpius, and open star cluster M4, nearby. Both were impressive and quietly beautiful. In fact, the view of M4 seemed better than some of my previous sightings with bright stars scattered across a bed of diamond dust and with a roughly oblong shape in the FOV. We noticed seeing was rapidly deteriorating and as I escorting our last guests out the door, we looked up -- a thicker veil of clouds was moving into the area. By 11:45 the sky was opaque again.