Observing the Winter Night Sky from Riverwoods Field Lab

Riverwoods Field Lab of the Center for Environmental Studues of Florida Atlantic University
http://www.ces.fau.edu/education/riverwoods/
hosts science students from Palm Beach Community College in West Palm Beach, Florida. Chris Stephan, Education Specialist at Riverwoods (and AAVSO observer) will present the winter night sky to the students. They will view through Riverwoods' 12 inch reflecting telescope. Chris will also use a green laser pointer to show the constellations and bright stars by name. Epsilon Aurigae, Algol, and other Citizen Sky stars will be discussed.

Hopefully, our new friend(s) will join us. We have had a beautiful Barred Owl make his home at Riverwoods, and now he has just attracted a mate. We had a group out about a month ago, and wherever we went, the owl flew right along with us. He even landed on the ground near the telescope and we were gathered around it with our red flashlights. He just hooted up a storm. I think he wanted to look through the telescope.

The event will last from 7:30PM-10:00PM. The event is not open to the public, but is for the college students only. They stay over night and the next day go out on our pontoon boat on the Kissimmee River and do environmental studies and see the Kissimmee River restoration project.

Riverwoods is in the last truely dark sky site in all of south-central Florida. On a clear moonless night we can see 6.5 magnitude.

Chris Stephan
Robert Clyde Observatory
Sebring, Florida  USA