River Bend Farm: August 2022
by Jim Hendrickson
After having no participation or promotion for our June and July nights at River Bend, Francine contacted Molly Cardoza, the Director of Volunteer & Community Engagement with the Blackstone Heritage Corridor, to see what could be done to improve the exposure for our many-years-running night sky events originally begun by Kent Cameron.
Molly responded immediately and we saw the event advertised in the Blackstone Heritage Corridor’s weekly e-newsletter, and she informed us that she had found three additional volunteers to participate: William Nawrocki, Abigail Epplett, and Raindrop Fisher.
The volunteers used the park’s 6-inch Newtonians while Skyscrapers members Bob Janus, Francine Jackson, and Jim Hendrickson brought their own telescopes: Bob’s 6-inch SCT, Francine’s 4-inch refractor, and Jim’s 3-inch refractor.
Additionally, one of the guests, Michael, set up and used a 4-inch Newtonian.
We arrived early enough to explore the part of the canal walk adjacent to the observing field.
As is often the case at River Bend, a bright and colorful sunset preceded the evening’s viewing. The top of a distant thunderstorm billowed over a broken layer of clouds to the southeast, as the setting sun painted it in a vivid sequence of yellow, orange, red, and violet. We could see several flashes emanating from the thunderstorm as the sky darkened, and we waited for anything bright enough to point the telescopes at to show through the thickening cloud layer above us.
The receding thunder clouds gave way to intermittent views of Saturn, for many of us, our first telescopic views of the ringed planet in 2022.
When twilight faded away, the underside of the cloud shelf that kept covering Saturn was being illuminated by the nearly full Moon, though we couldn’t yet see the Moon itself.
Not many other objects presented themselves through about 80% cloud cover. We caught glimpses of the Summer Triangle, and Saturn came and went.
By about 9:30pm, conditions hadn’t improved and we started putting away our telescopes. Suddenly, a bright spot appeared to the right of the light patch behind the clouds indicating where the Moon would be. This spot, appearing 42° horizontally to the west of the Moon, quickly brightened and began to show distinct color. It turns out that we were treated to a rather rare sighting of the paraselenae, or moondogs. The fleeting phenomenon evolved into a faint halo before disappearing entirely within about two minutes, followed shortly after by the Moon itself penetrating the edge of the cloud, giving us one final spectacle to observe before concluding.
In total, about 25 participants gathered to enjoy the views and each other’s company for this month’s River Bend night sky event.
