Sat, Sep 7 2013 - Hiking, Astronomy & Stargazing with Telescopes at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center + Dinner! (View Original Event Details) Trip Leader(s): Charlie Cottingham Participants: Charlie Cottingham, Sourav, Roe, Steven R, KenH, christy, Cynthia, HARRY Roisman, Brigitte, Mark W, JReb

We were fortunate to have beautiful clear weather last night and enjoyed fantastic naked-eye views of the Milky Way, the “Summer Triangle,” Polaris, Venus, and the 2-million-light-years-distant Andromeda Galaxy.  At dusk our friendly CEAstronomy.org hosts set up about 20 telescopes of all shapes and sizes on their dark-sky observing field and treated us to up-close views of the rings of Saturn, the donut-shaped “ring nebula,” the new crescent Moon and numerous deep-sky objects.  Our delicious potluck dinner and indoor meeting with my astronomer friends was also fun just before our nighttime observing session.  Earlier in the afternoon we enjoyed hiking about 5 miles of the pretty lakeside and creekside trail system at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center, and were rewarded along the way with frequent sightings of wild critters including deer, frogs and a great blue heron.  -Submitted by Charlie, Sunday AM Sep 8.