Our Programs…
… are on clear Friday and Saturday nights from March - Late November. Watch the main page. By noon on the day of each program we post a forecast and a note on whether or not the program that evening will go forward.
August 22-23: Stellar Nurseries, Stellar Graveyards: The Milky Way is dotted with places in which new stars are being born, and old stars are dying, seeing the cosmos with the new elements that worlds (and entities) like we are made from. 8:15 PM
August 29-30: The First and Last Apollo Missions: The lunar terminator, the line between night and day, is perfectly situated this weekend to allow us to see geography that surrounds the first and last Apollo Missions (11 and 17). 8:00 PM
September 5-6: Aristarchus and a Rainbow: The Brightest crater on the moon is striking in small telescopes, as is the Sinus Iridium, the “Bay of Rainbows”, both of which are seen well this weekend. 8:00 PM
September 12-13: Saturn Rises: The planet Saturn has returned to the evening skies and will rise above the trees at the eastern edge of our field once it is fully dark. Also, the Milky Way arcs high overhead on this dark sky weekend. 7:45 PM
September 19-20: The Little Constellations: Between the more well known star patterns are many diminutive constellations: A wolf, a Dolphin, a small horse, and an errant arrow. On this dark sky weekend, we’ll be exploring some of the gems they contain. 7:30 PM
NGC 4565 by Andy Downey
View of the Month:
NGC 4565 “The Needle Galaxy”
When you're an astro-nerd like me having a favorite galaxy (or star cluster, or nebula...) is not an uncommon or weird thing.
Given how many galaxies there are, and how lovely they appear, it's rather hard to pick a favorite one. But, if forced to choose, I might say "NGC 4565!"
NGC 4565, the so-called "needle" galaxy, looks like a "UFO". It is actually, "flying-saucer"-shaped, but we see it edge-on, making it appear thin and otherworldly (because it literally is! ) from our point of view.
Its distance has been hard to pin down, but it is thought to be somewhere between 35 and 60 million light years distant.
If it's at the far end of that range its estimated size is enormous, perhaps twice the diameter of our own Milky Way.
Through a telescope, this galaxy looks like a ghostly needle piercing the night. In a large telescope, like the 28-inch at JGAP, faint hints of the dust lane- the dark material out of which new generations of stars will form, can be seen.
Though it looks more distant, the small galaxy next to it, may be a bit closer to us.
This image was taken in March by Andy Downey. He gathered photons for six hours to obtain this result.
