January 17, 2015 Astronomy night

We had a perfect night for astronomy viewing on January 17th.  In the cool crisp air we were able to see several planets including: Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars and Jupiter.  Constellations were very clear unlike the Irridium flare that fizzled out.  The highlight of the evening though was the Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2).  , which has not been seen in 11,000 years and will not be back around for another 8,000 as it’s period shortens.  It is often described as a fuzzy greenish light differing from stars and can be seen with the naked eye in dark skies or with binoculars.  We viewed it through different telescopes including one that projected onto a computer screen.  Very exciting indeed!  Thank you to our volunteer astronomers who make this event possible: Mike, Gary, James, Kieth, Dennis and Spencer.

Photo credit:  ESA/Hubble [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons