Upcoming Programs
The JGAP grounds are open for individual stargazing on non-program nights. Please feel free to drive on in. You may bring chairs, telescopes, cameras if you wish.
We do programs on Friday and Saturday nights from March through November.
Our programs have returned as of March 1, 2024.
April 19-20: The Bright Moon Rises/Jupiter Bows Out 8:00 PM The moon is almost full this weekend, so we will again be focusing on it as it rises after dark. This is the last chance to see Jupiter before it dives into the sunset.
April 26-27: The Moon Rises Late: 8:15 PM
With the moon out of the way for a while, we will be able to admire The Galaxies in Leo, the Beehive cluster in Cancer the Crab, and the rich star cluster M35 in Gemini
May 3-4: Lots and Lots of Galaxies 8:30 PM
On May evenings, observers on the surface of the Earth look out towards deep space. With the Milky Way out of the way we can appreciate the vast realm of the galaxies- faint, fuzzy and far, far away.
May 10-11: The Whirlpool Galaxy and Earthshine: 8:30 PM
The most glorious galaxy at the eyepiece of a telescope is M51, the great Whirlpool galaxy near the tail of the Big Dipper. Come learn how to see its spiral arms in our large telescopes. Also, the setting moon holds “Earthshine” on its night side.
May 17-18: Copernicus, the most dramatic crater 8:30 PM
One of the most striking crater on the surface of the moon is the rugged Copernicus. It is perfectly illuminated this weekend.
May 24-25: The Almost Full Moon and The Big Dipper 8:45 PM
The almost full moon rises just at it gets fully dark, so galaxies and nebulae are difficult to see. But the Big Dipper has a striking double star called Mizar and Alcor, which can be admired with the naked eye and a telescope
May 31-June1 Globular Clusters! 8:45 PM
One of the most beautiful objects in the spring and summer sky are globular cluster, great collections of hundreds of thousands of stars, we will be training our scopes on M3 and M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. They will be high overhead when skies are fully dark.
June 7-8 More Galaxies 9:00 PM
This is another dark night to admire the galaxies in the spring and early summer sky. One highlight: M104- the oddly shaped Sombrero Galaxy, which peeks up over the southern horizon at this time of year.
June 14-15 Spring turns to Summer 9:00 PM
Spring is turning into summer later next week, and the sun is almost as far north as it will get. It will start to set in our Summer Solstice sun slot. Also, the rugged first quarter moon, including the Apollo 11, 16 and 17 sites.
The two bright galaxies M81 (left bottom) and M82 (right bottom). They are well placed for observing throughout the spring. Image by James Luke
Passes for Upcoming Programs
Passes for programs through the end of spring are now able to be acquired at:
http://registration.jgap.org
Our programs take place on clear Friday and Saturday evenings from March- November
How Was Your Eclipse Experience?
By a fluke of weather, Ohio experienced clear (but a bit hazy) skies for the eclipse. This allowed millions of folks to enjoy the extraordinary view on Monday, April 8.
JGAP hired a bus, which took 46 observers to a location selected for its likelihood of clear skies. We ended up in the tiny hamlet of Elsinore, Missouri in a wonderful setting and experienced 4 minutes and 9 seconds of glorious totality!
This was the most beautiful eclipse of the four that I have seen (although that may be recency bias talking.) The rich orange “all around” sunset, the brilliant pinpricks of Jupiter and Venus, and that stunning “messy hair” corona.
One question I’m getting a lot is:
What was that pink spike of light on the bottom of the sun?
That was a solar prominence, commonly called a “solar flare”. It was a giant tongue of mostly hydrogen plasma (atoms stripped of their electrons) being drawn up from the surface of the sun by its intense magnetic fields.
Its Barbie Pink glow is due to the fact that hydrogen gas emits light in three, very specific, frequencies: a deep blue, a kind of aqua-blue, and a deep red. Combine these three colors and you get Barbie Pink, one of the most common colors in the universe!
If you got images, why not share them on our Facebook page or Instagram feed.
https://www.facebook.com/JohnGlennAstronomyPark
#jgastropark
Total solar eclipse during “Bailey’s Beads” phase, taken from Elsinore, MO by James Luke.
02. Astrophotography
01. Galaxy Season
Image of M51 by Joe Renzetti
To amateur astronomers, spring is known as “galaxy season.” It’s a time when the evening skies point outward in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the obscuring dust of our own Milky-Way.
With the Milky-Way out of the way we can see more clearly into deep intergalactic space, and enjoy the innumerable distant island universes, each will billions, or even hundreds of billions, of stars.
One of the most striking galaxies in the spring sky is Messier 51 (M51). Appearing near the tip of the tail of the Big Dipper, this relatively bright galaxy has a great deal of star formation going on. Its spiral arms are well defined and amongst the easiest to see in a large telescope on clear evenings.
Curiously, this is not one, but two galaxies in the process of colliding in a slow motion dance that will spray stars into deep space over the next billion years or so.
Image by Alex Mullins
On most clear, moonless, evenings, you’ll find folks taking advantage of the dark skies at JGAP to shoot images of the night sky.
This pastime is known as astrophotography.
All are welcome to bring cameras and telescopes to JGAP to try their hand at this.
If you get a good image, why not share it with us by using our Instagram hashtag: #jgastropark
Get up-to-date information and astronomical news on our Facebook page
Predicting the Weather
The Clear Sky Clock
The chart below is an hour by hour prediction of how clear the skies will likely be over the coming two days. Cloud cover and transparency are the critical data points. In general, dark blue is best. If both transparency and Cloud Cover are indicated as dark blue, then skies are likely to be clear and filled with stars. Lighter colors are proportionally worse.
In recent months, the predictions of the Clear Sky Clock have been somewhat unreliable, so use at your own risk.
Astrospherics
Another great site for predicting conditions on an hour by hour basis is Astropherics, whose model of late is better than that of the Clear Sky Clock. Access JGAP’s location with this link:
Weather.Gov
Finally, the best site for predicting the weather is the site from which all the data comes from in the first place, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s forecast page. The best forecast for JGAP is the Logan, Ohio hourly pinpoint forecast. Find it here.
The most critical part of the forecast is the blue line which represents the predicted cloud cover for that hour. Generally 50% or higher is not good.
Support the Friends of the Hocking Hills State Park
Do you love the Hocking Hills State Park? Would you like to help projects that make HHSP an even better place? Do you love JGAP?
Then consider joining The Friends of the Hocking Hills State Park, an organization that supports projects like JGAP and other enhancements to the most beautiful park in Ohio.
http://www.friendsofhockinghills.org/
Mission
The John Glenn Astronomy Park is dedicated to sparking an interest in science, learning, and exploration by sharing with visitors the wonders of the sky, both day and night.
The Inspiration
Throughout most of history, humans have been inspired by the wondrous sight of a night sky filled with stars. Our stories and mythologies have been mapped upon the patterns of the stars. Our calendars, festivals, and agriculture have been linked to the movement of the heavens. In recent times, a view of the night sky has been the inspiration in many young people for lifelong passion for science in general.
Sadly, however, the lights of our modern world have, in recent decades, put our view of the heavens behind a veil of artificial light. Most of us live under a sky that gives only a pale, washed out hint of its former beauty.
An astronomy park in the Hocking Hills State park was inspired by our vanishing night sky. The Hocking Hills, in rural southeastern Ohio, is one of the few areas left in the state of Ohio where the night sky can be seen in its near pristine state. The observatory provides a venue for visitors to the Hocking Hills State park to experience the night sky through a large telescope and with their eyes.
The observatory also draws on the countless generations of humans who marked the important changes of the seasons through the motion of the sun and who built great structures, like Stonehenge in England, the Chaco Canyon Kiva in New Mexico or many Hopewell and Fort Ancient Earthworks in Ohio, that commemorated these days. The plaza has been designed to allow the rays of the sun to fall upon a special central point on the first day of each of the four seasons.
Join our Facebook and Instagram Communities
We have a Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/JohnGlennAstronomyPark/?ref=bookmarks
… and an Instagram Page
https://www.instagram.com/jgastropark/
On both we are regularly featuring items of astronomical interest.
If you have questions that you’d like addressed in these feeds, feel free to Facebook Messenger them to us!
“The greatest thing we can do is inspire young minds...”
- John Glenn
John Glenn's offical portait prior to his 1998 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. NASA
About John Glenn
John Glenn was a decorated Military Pilot, a US Senator, and, most famously, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.
John Glenn was born in 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio and was raised in the small town of New Concord, home of Muskingum University where he attended college. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps soon after the US entered World War II. He was a highly decorated pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, as well, and few over 90 missions.
After the war, he became a test pilot and developed a reputation as an outstanding aviator. On July 16, 1957, in a mission dubbed “Project Bullet”, Glenn set the nation’s transcontinental flight speed record. It was this experience that the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration cited when choosing him as one of the Mercury 7, the first American Astronauts. During the Korean War, Glenn would fly combat missions with Red Sox great Ted Williams.
On February 20, 1962, Glenn was launched into space atop a Mercury Atlas rocket, a vehicle that had experienced several catastrophic failures prior to this mission, and orbited the earth three times during a mission that lasted 4 hours and 55 minutes. Towards the end of the flight, a failure in the automatic-control system of his Mercury Capsule, Friendship 7, required him to take the controls and fly manually. This was the first time this had been done. The landing was successful, and Glenn returned a national hero. On March 1, 1962, Glenn was welcomed home by millions at a ticker tape parade in his honor in New York City.
After retiring from NASA, Glenn entered and made three attempts to run for the US Senate- succeeding on his third try. During his senate career he was considered an expert in science and technology and on military matters. Glenn’s advocacy for the reduction of nuclear weapons culminated in the passage of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, which was signed into law by President Carter. In 1984, Glenn sought the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nomination.
Glenn served in the Senate until his retirement in December 1998. That same year, it was announced that he would be returning to space on board the space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-95 crew. Serving as Payload Specialist, Glenn began his second flight on October 29, 1998, making him the oldest person to fly in space.
In 2015 John Glenn gave his permission to use his name on the Observatory Park project being planned by the Friends of the Hocking Hills.
Glenn died on December 8, 2016 at the OSU Wexner Medical Center.
We hope to see his legacy of exploration and inspiration continue!