January 1 2020 New Years Hike Osage Hills

New Year’s Hike at Osage Hills State Park Dec. 31, 2019-Jan. 1, 2020

What: Telescope/binocular viewing at tennis court for people attending the New Year’s midnight hike at Osage Hills State Park Jan. 1, 2020

Who: Any BAS/BYA members able to attend, plus members of the public

Where: Tennis court at Osage Hills State Park

When: Dec. 31, 2019-Jan. 1, 2020. Club members set up telescopes around 10:30 p.m. The hike began at midnight and hikers started arriving at the tennis court shortly thereafter. Club members started packing up around 1:30 a.m.

Who coordinated: John Blaesi coordinated with Nick Conner, Park Manager at Osage Hills State Park. The idea of doing this came about during Nick Conner’s presentation at the BAS meeting in November.

Publicity used: We discussed this at the December BAS/BYA meetings. The second week of December, Nick sent an email about this to John Blaesi, who in turn sent an email to Club members with details about the event. John sent a reminder email just before Christmas with a link to Osage Hill’s publicity about the event, and a map. Derek posted this on the BAS web page and the club Facebook page. Mike Woods put information about the hike in the January Club newsletter, since the event was open to the public.

We didn’t do any yellow sheet, newspaper or Cable One/Sparklight advertising as this event was sponsored by Osage Hills.

Here is a link to Osage Hill’s publicity: https://www.travelok.com/listings/view.profile/id.19298

Number of people who attended: Three BAS members plus about 75 hikers!

Number telescopes used: Two. Bob did bring a telescope, but he didn’t set it up. What he did do was set up his DSLR camera and demonstrate to people wide field deep sky photography that anyone can do with a modest digital camera. Most of the hikers were impressed with watching a 20 second exposure taken and then seeing the resultant photo of two galaxies, the Milky Way and Andromeda!

Other materials brought: December/January star charts, our handout bin, a small table, small red lights to mark where telescopes were, and lawn chairs.

Materials of location site used: The tennis court. Nick provided hot chocolate, enough for about 25 people.

BAS expenditures: None

What we observed: The Milky Way, Orion Nebula, double clusters, the Pleiades, the Andromeda galaxy.

Comments: Nick estimated that we might have as many as 20-25 hikers…we had 75! Considering the number of hikers, we could have used more telescopes plus someone to man the information table and answer questions. This was the first year we did this so we really didn’t know what to expect, but the weather was clear and more people came than had been anticipated!