Wrap-Up Photo Gallery
Star Night Event: September 11, 2010
Almost 200 people from Sonoita, Oracle, Phoenix, Tucson and more (and even as far away as Germany and England!) joined us for our 2nd “Star Night” event in Cochise County. The event was led by Kartchner Caverns State Park volunteer astronomer and dark sky advocate Bob Gent and other local astronomers. In total, we had six astronomers from the Huachuca Astronomy Club, 
. This included Wayne Johnson (President and supernovae discoverer), Glen Sanner (VP and sky guide author), Rich Swanson (Outreach coordinator), Doug Snyder (Past president and comet discoverer), Bob Hoover. Brian Williams, the Patterson Observatory telescope operator from the University of Arizona South, also attended.
JD and Karen Maddy (Astronomers of Verde Valley ) were quite skilled and have obviously done this many times before. Their multiple telescopes were quite helpful, as was JD’s introduction. As I told them that night, this was like “two astronomers for the price of one.” There were two people from Tucson with small scopes, and I had not met them before (They were not members of TAAA). In addition, there were several people who brought telescopes who had had problems operating them. We were able to help them assemble and for the first time, view through the telescopes.
With about ten telescopes set up, we observed a number of wonders of the night sky. We looked at the crescent shaped planet Venus, the craters of the moon, star clusters, galaxies, and much more.
The weather was partly cloudy until dark; then the skies cleared up nicely. At about 9:30 pm JD and I used our SQMs to take sky brightness readings. At near zenith, we measured 21.22 magnitude per arc second squared. This is a very good reading with the Milky Way easy to see. In the future, we plan begin a scientific sky brightness reading system. We look forward to hosting this event again the future.
Photography by Robert Casavant for Arizona State Parks. Copyright © Arizona State Parks. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited. Milky Way Galaxy photo courtesy Doug Snyder. Kartchner Caverns sign photo courtesy JD Maddy.
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