August 16, 2025 Seagrave Observatory Night
by Michael Corvese
Our streak of favorable Saturday nights continued on August 24. A sizable group had arrived just before darkness, as we started our seasonally-adjusted earlier start time of 8:00pm.
Mark Munkacsy entertained a steady group in the 8-inch dome with simple explanations of the astrophysical properties of objects he pointed the telescope at, including M57 and M13.
Bob Janus trained the 12-inch on Alberio, in Cygnus and other objects.
Francine welcomed guests and shared her knowledge of constellations and the solar system.
Laura Landen set up the Seestar S30 in back, near the 12-inch roll off, and captured an image of NGC 7000, the North America Nebula. Jay Baccala set up a Seestar S50 in the front yard and imaged M11, M20, and M23.
This was perhaps the darkest and most transparent skies that can be experienced at Seagrave Observatory, at least at this time of year. Unlike last week, the Milky Way was clearly visible from Cepheus all the way to Sagittarius, with the Great Rift and the Scutum area fairly distinct.
Towards the end of the evening, I helped Bob locate some carbon stars with the 12-inch, starting with T Lyrae, which didn’t appear to be as deep red as it did the previous week. We then moved to mu Cephei, the Garnet Star, which appeared rather bright and had a distinct deep golden color.
