FREE!
September 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
<– Harvest Moonrise in Galiza, Spain (from NASA). As part of the International Year of Astronomy, the Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomical Association will be hosting nightly FREE telescope viewing tonight (Oct. 1). The clear skies were perfect for viewing last night. Tonight, high clouds will be moving in this afternoon, so it’ll be a race to get out early and see the Moon and Jupiter if we can through the high clouds. If skies are already cloudy, the event will be cancelled. The moon will be 94% full tonight. They’ll be setting up telescopes at 11 locations all over the Grand Rapids area (Calvin College, GVSU in Allendale, Celebration Cinema North & South, Northview H.S., E. Kentwood H.S., Lowell, Forest Hills East, East G.R., 3rd Reformed Church, Rosa Park Circle). For a complete list check out the GRAAA website.
I am a fan of free telescope viewing as much as the next guy, but some of these locations are not very well chosen due to the amount of ambient light oming from buildings and parking lots. If all you are going to be viewing is the moon… should be fine. To view other objects… not so good.
It’s called “bringing astronomy to the public” and the astronomy club is doing this to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo using the telescope. The primary targets are the moon, and the planet Jupiter (with its moons).
Sidewalk Astronomy has been done for decades, right out on street corners. Heck, I live in the city, and I observe regularly from my yard.
If people wish to see more, they can always go out to the observatory during public viewing nights.
When I went out to check my rain gauge at 6 AM there were breaks in the clouds and even here in town you could see stars that most of the time you can not see so above the clouds this AM it must be very clear. But I do agree with Dave M on the locations not being the best for sky viewing.
Also I was suprised to wake up to 1. no wind at all and 2. have received 1.33″ of rain!
Had some thunder and lighniting over night and a lot of rain here 1.33″ so a lot more then expected. As of 6:43 the wind is calm here and that was a suprise for I did not expect to have a howling wind but I did expect to have at lest some wind! With that calm wind the temp is now 50.
SlimJim
Wow, what a beautiful Harvest Moon picture!