BELL COUNTY STAR PARTY 

BELL COUNTY STAR PARTY

August 28, 2010

8:00pm to 11:00pm

            Central Texas Astronomical Society will be meeting on Saturday August 28 at 8:00pm to 11:00pm at Overlook Park on Stillhouse Hollow Lake. CTAS members will have telescopes set up for public viewing. If you have a scope, it will be great to bring it out and help or just do your own viewing.

 

            Planets Mars, Venus and Saturn are all pretty close together and are setting around dusk while Uranus and Jupiter are coming up around 10pm. Jupiter is very bright and Mars and Saturn are far out in orbit so they are not as bright. For deep sky objects, we have some excellent objects lying between Vega in the constellation Lyra, Altair in the Constellation of Aquila and Deneb in Cynus (the Northern Cross) which make up the “Summer Triangle”. The Ring Nebula M57 is extremely interesting. We also find M29, a Open Cluster of Stars along with M-27 a Planetary Nebula. Just outside the so called “Summer Triangle” we can find M-11, the Wild Duck cluster of Stars. There are many other Globular Clusters of stars like M-13 that are impressive and can be seen with binoculars. Try your eye on seeing the “Eagle Nebula” (M16). This has been made famous by the Hubble pictures of the “Pillars or Creation” contained in M16.

 

            If you have digital camera that can be adjusted to take timed exposures without flash, you might want to try your hand at getting a picture of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy which will appear very colorful to the camera but not to our eyes as they will not register color this low.

 

If you have an interest in learning the night sky and joining us in the fun come check it out. You might want to join this group as a member of CTAS and share in learning about the night sky objects. In the event we have weather that will not permit viewing, we will post the cancellation on our web site by 6pm.

 

Please check the website: http://www.centexastronomy.org/  for more information on CTAS and this event

 

Directions to viewing sites:

 Overlook Park:

               Overlook Park is located near the Stillhouse Hollow Dam. To get to Overlook Park

 from Interstate 35, go west on Hwy 190 toward Killeen for about 2 miles. Then

 proceed south on FM1670.  The park is on the west side of FM 1670 about 3 miles

 south of Hwy 190, just beyond the radio tower.

Contact Information:
Aubrey Brickhouse, CTAS Bell County Coordinator
254-760-2693 

 

 

Register for automatic Star Party reminders

Automatically receive notices of our star parties!  Just register once for a Bell County Star Party, and you will receive an email notice/reminder each month.  Go to our Events page, click on the Bell County Star Party Calendar Entry, and then on the "Register" button.  Registration for our public star parties is optional.  Register only if you want to receive a monthly notice/reminder. 

DATE  

VIEW LIST  

LOCATION

HOST

DATE         

VIEW LIST

LOCATION  

HOST 

Jan 09:5:45PM-9:45PM 

JANUARY   

Aubrey Brickhouse 

JULY

OVERLOOK PARK

FEBRUARY 

Tom Westwick

AUGUST

MARCH

OVERLOOK PARK 

Sept 25 

7:30PM-11:30PM

SEPTEMBER  

OVERLOOK PARK

Aubrey Brickhouse 

OCTOBER

Mike Wright 

NOVEMBER

TBA

Aubrey Brickhouse and Warren Hart 

DECEMBER

OVERLOOK PARK

TBA