RECENT & PAST EVENTS!!
While we can't put every event on our site, we do rotate shows every few months.
Be sure to watch for your school!
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January 2008 - Dearborn Elemenatary (No pix) |
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January 2008 - Monroe Elementary |
Cub Scouts |
| Canton Charter Academy, 2007 |
Labor Day Weekend, 2003.
Another great time! The skies in Northern Michigan are simply amazing. Our group made it to Indian River Saturday morning. The traffic was a bummer but the viewing in Northern Michigan is so worth the trip. Saturday evening we met a few more friends who were visiting their cabin on Burt Lake. We were so happy to be able to introduce a mom and her 12 year old son to the heavens. It didn't take long to get an ooh and an aah. We started the evening with M-13. If you can't win a cynic's heart upon their first view of this awesome cluster, you'll never win. We easily roped them both in when as they took their first view through our huge scope. The moon was also just a sliver of a crescent. Viewing the moon when it is a crescent is really a great time. We viewed about 20 different objects before the clouds moved in for the night. Then we set up a few lawn chairs, sat around and talked for a while and waited in vain for the skies to clear up. Nothing doing! It didn't matter. The mom made sure to let us know that her other son would be up to view the next time we were up.
Sunday night was a lot nicer. There must have been thousands of stars visible. It was like a giant salt shaker had been let loose on the heavens! The Milky Way is ..... incredible under truly dark skies. A few of us laid out on a deck that stretches about 40 yards into Burt Lake. I wish I could put into words the beauty of a clear night sky when it is perfectly clear, and there are no viewing obstructions. The skies are pure heaven. I'm not going to go into the usual explanations of objects observed. We really don't have enough web space to talk about them every time. I will finish with this, Mars was unbelievable! We gave the mom and son a look at 100X and then jumped up to over 600X. The ice cap, albeit small this time of year, jumped right out at us. The surface features were beautiful. I took the digital camera with us and tried to hold it up to the eyepiece for a picture. I took a few but they didn't turn out very well. I will certainly get a good picture before Mars loses it's luster next month.
Friday Sept 6, 2003 I want to thank all of the new faces for making the trip to our star party on Friday. I had a great time entertaining people. I am kind of bummed that we didn't have a guestbook. Thanks to Jeff and his girlfriend for bringing out your 10 Meade LX200. Talk about a great scope! If you didn't make it out, you missed out big time! We had about 20 or so people throughout the night. All but a few were new faces. The moon was a little over half full, which made viewing anything but Mars and the moon tough but it was still a great time. Hopefully we'll see all of you back next weekend. I took a few pictures with a regular digital camera. Be sure to check them out on our Objects Observed page. I also took a few pics of some of our guests. I can't remember all of the names. If you attended please send me an email if you recognize your face. I'll publish it here under the picture!
Saturday, Sept 7. Another great time! We took the scope to Ohio for a star party in Ottawa Nature Preserve in Ohio, which is about 16 miles east of Oregon Ohio. There were about 10 "birders" who came out for our show. We spent about 4 hours looking at the heavens. There were a lot of excellent questions about the constellations. One of our friends brought out a glow in the dark constellation finder. Too cool. We will be making the trip to Ohio once a month. If you are interested in making the trip, let us know.
Friday, September 12. The skies weren't as great as we'd expected as the evening began, but as the night progressed the skies cleared up rather nicely. It wasn't until after 10 that people started showing up. I was very surprised. We ended up with around 20 people throughout the night. We got excellent views of the moon, pretty good views of Mars, and M13. We also took a gander at Mizar in the Big Dipper and later in the evening we looked at the Pleaides. If you left early you missed out. The pleaides are beautiful! It looks like we are going to plan a trip to Indian River in October. We fished around to see how much interest we could drum up and got at least 6 people who were interested.
II took the picture too early in the evening. We were pleasantly surprised when 7 more guests showed up later in the evening. Pictured from left to right are Garrett, Mark, Heidi, Richard , Lorell, Andrew, Lisa, Suzanne, Corry, and Miles. Not pictured are Breanne & Whitney. Whitney was doing what she does best at star-parties. Check her out below.
Ah yes, here she is. Our resident sleeper, Whitney. If you can't haul gravel in the back of your pick-up, it makes a great bed for nigh-night.
Saturday, September 20. Although we didn't get together because I had Naval Reserve duty, I drug the telescope out at 4:00 am in the morning on Sunday to get a prelude of things to come. Was I surprised by the beautiful sights. The Pleaides were directly overhead and they were awesome! Saturn was also an amazing sight. I could easily resolve the cassini rings at 250 power. I also got an unbeliveable view of the Great Orion Nebulae. Even without the filter the view was fantastic. Jupiter was still below the horizon as it's just making it's way around the sun. Next month it will be in an excellent position for our star gathering in Northern Michigan. It will most likely rise around 3 in the morning, which will be great for viewing under the dark skies of the north.
November 9th Eclipse. Wow. What a great time. We had a lot of visitors who stopped by tonight for the festivities. We had a great bonfire and refreshments. We also took a lot of pictures of the eclipse. We are currently working on making a real time video for your viewing pleasure.
I really don't remember all of their names so I won't list any of them. We had a great time!
A couple ladies stopped by late in the evening to catch a glimpse of the end of the eclipse. Send me an email. I can't remember your names! UGH! I see you Suzanne...in back.
Wednesday, November 20. Whitney and I observed for a little over an hour before Mark got there. We scanned around the Milky Way Galaxy for a while. We took a nice view of Mars. Later on in the evening, Mark and I got some great views since the skies were cooperating beautifully. We got to see a wonderful double cluster in Perseus. We also viewed Saturn, M35, 36, 37 & the Crab Nebulae. Earlier in the evening I observed M13 and the Ring Nebulae. The new lens is great! The Orion Nebulae is a beautiful sight.
Well, the weather hasn't cooperated as of late. We did some great viewing New Years Eve. We haven't been out until tonight. It's really hard to view when it's only 9 degrees as it was tonight. Pretty much everyone wimped out. Luckily Miles and I weathered (haha) the cold tonight and got some excellent views of Saturn. We also viewed the Pleiades and the Orion Nebulae. Talk about beautiful. I took a few pictures of Saturn using a cheap camera. I simply put the camera up to the telescope lens and took the shot. Check it out below. Pretty cool huh?
A couple of new faces and a few of our members out for a view of Saturn, Jupiter, The Orion Nebulae and the Moon. February 28, 2004. Pictured from left to right, Gerald Mathews III, Gerald Mathews Jr., Gerald Mathews Sr., Doug, & John. Thanks to Tom, Susan, Miles, Whitney, Dave & Ashley for showing up later in the evening.
What a night. The clouds moved in and out but it didn't matter. We also thought the moon was going to cause problems tonight but it turned out that the moon is absolutely beautiful through the bino-viewer. We spent the evening looking at different double stars, star clusters, the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Great Orion Nebulae. We were lucky enough to get a few new faces out under the stars. Thanks to Tom, Dave, Ashley, Susan, Miles, Whitney, & Corry for coming out for a view tonight.
Fun, fun, fun. You missed the fun. Although Friday nights forecast was for clear skies, it clouded up before dark and remained cloudy all night. The next night the non-weather forecasters predicted cloud cover. It was clear ALL NIGHT! We were fortunate enough to have several new faces show up for viewing and what a treat it was! We got possibly some of the best views of Saturn and Jupiter that I've ever seen. The Cassini rings were a piece of cake. We also got a great view of Jupiter and it's moons. It was wonderful watching Io cast it's shadow as it traversed the face of Jupiter. We then watched as Io emerge from the face of Jupiter. As it did it made what appeared to be a small white bump that bulged from the side of the planet. It eventually turned into a little white globe as it moved in it's orbit away from the face. WOW! It's really hard to explain. You should have been there! Thanks to Tom, Susan, Phyllis, Barry, Whitney, Gerald Jr., and Gerald III, Helen, Dave, and Miles for "Sirius-ly" weathering the cold. I hope your experience was as awesome as mine!
Rich and I got out for a few hours tonight. We got an unbelievable view of Jupiter tonight. We watched Io and Ganymede pass across the face of the planet. Shortly thereafter Io was eclipsed by Ganymede. What an amazing thing to see. I have never seen this before. Rich was pretty excited also. We also looked at about 2 dozen different globular clusters and a few nebulae. Luckily for us the moon is just coming out of it's new phase. If you didn't make it out tonight you "siriusly" missed out.
What a fantastic night! Unfortunately not too many people made it out on short notice. I have to tell you that the skies were probably the clearest that I have seen this year. The southern skies were nice and dark (for metro-Detroit). I got excellent... no, fantastic, amazing, beautiful views of dozens of open clusters and nebulae. Garret, Slava, Cathy, Whitney and I got to view pretty much M2 - M25, most of which are near the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius. I can't believe how beautiful M24 and M11 truly are. I can't wait to get to the dark skies of the north to get a shot at these same objects. I really can't even imagine how beautiful they will be. We also spent time looking at M13 and the ring nebulae. Wow! We got views of Uranus and Neptune and yes, we did see the illusive Pluto. How do I know? Okay, I "think" I saw Pluto. The problem is that it is just a dot in a background of stars.
If you have been to one of our stargazing events and would like to leave a comment for publication, please click here. We'll publish it right here!
If you haven't come out to view you need to get your rear in gear. Send us an email and we'll let you know where we will be viewing. Come on out for a free night of viewing!
We are "Sirius" about stargazing, seriously!!
Contact us if you want to be placed on our mailing list. We'll let you know the viewing dates in the coming weeks.
