Member’s Dark Sky Weekend

March Members’ Dark Sky Weekend

Join fellow club members for a weekend under dark skies! Friday is the primary observing night, with Saturday as the backup.

Will it be warm enough?! I hope so because March is a great month for observing.
Great targets are:

• The Owl Nebula (M97, NGC3587) is one of the best planetary nebulae in the sky.
• Then it’s just a slide nudge of the scope to view the Surfboard Galaxy (M108, NGC3556).
• Move on over to Leo and bag the Leo Triplet (M65, M66 and NGC3628). This is an astronomer’s fav!
• Now let’s target the missing messier in Leo (NGC2903). Often overlooked because it isn’t on that list.
• How about two galaxies interacting? In Canes Venatici there’s The Whale Galaxy & The Hockey Stick (NGC 4631 and NGC4656).
• How about something tough…  The Intergalactic Wanderer (NGC 2419), a highly unusual globular cluster in Lynx—incredibly distant—farther from the galactic center than the Magellanic Clouds. To us it’s a dim, ghostly fuzzball with a unique cosmic backstory that makes it thrilling to find.
• Can’t leave out the open clusters, so let’s move the scope over to Cassiopeia where Caroline’s Rose Cluster (NGC7789) displays loops of stars and dark dust lanes wrapped together to mimic the delicate petals of a rose.

It will probably be cold, but who cares. Let’s get out there anyway!

Check back for updates and additional event details.