The Pattonville Observatory and Planetarium
Public Viewing Session

195 Fee Fee Road
(next to the gym, door is below the dome)
Below is the info for the next session.
Please join us and bring friends!

Next Session:

Friday, November 22, 2024

7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Website:  https://sites.google.com/psdr3.org/observatory/ 

Information hotline: 314-213-8034

The Moon will be in the third quarter phase and won’t interfere with dark sky viewing tonight.  It rises about midnight!

We will talk a little about meteors as the peak for the famous Leonid Meteor Shower is coming up.  It generally produces up to 10 meteors per hour.

Saturn and Jupiter will be prominent in the south and will make good targets tonight.  All four of the Galilean Moons of Jupiter will be visible.  Also visible are the blue gas-giants Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is visible, but is just too dim to be seen with our telescope under light polluted skies. 

Taurus and Auriga are well placed in the East and the Pleiades are visible along with some of the open clusters in Auriga such as M36, M37 and M38.  Orion will be just above the horizon right at the end of our session.  If it’s not too hazy, we might get a look at the Great Orion Nebula or M42.  We will use the Orion Short Tube 80 refractor to view the Pleiades as it doesn’t fit in our large telescope.  We will also discuss the difference between the refractor and the main telescope which is a Schmidt-Cassegrain.  Just below the Pleiades are the Hyades, another very large open group of stars.  Gemini is also rising at the end of our session, so we might try a view of M35.

The asterism called the Coathanger will be one of our targets for this evening.  It is found between Vega and Altair.   While we are in the area, we will look at the Double Double star system in Lyra, Albireo in Cygnus and M57 or the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  M13, the globular cluster in Hercules, and M11, the Wild Duck Cluster will also be targets for the evening.  M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest neighbor and the Double Cluster will also be targets.

Come spend the evening viewing the cosmos with your family, residents and non-residents are welcome!  Students, who are accompanied by their parents, are especially welcome!  Please take note that the dome is not heated or cooled, so pay attention to the weather and dress in a manner that is appropriate for the evening temperature conditions.  If it is raining or cloudy, a program will still be presented so come on up!

Next Session:  See the list below!