Tag Archives: Beaver Lake Nature Center

Spring Constellations And Planet Observation – CNYO At Beaver Lake Nature Center, 27 April 2017

Greetings, fellow astrophiles!

I am pleased to announce that the first official CNYO session for 2017 will be held next week (or the week after, weather-pending) at one of our most regular observing locations. Bob Piekiel and Larry Slosberg will be hosting at Beaver Lake from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. at the northern tip of the big loop (just aim for the main parking lot).

The event is free with Beaver Lake admission (click HERE for the direct event link), but they do request advanced registration. If interested, please call Beaver Lake Nature Center at 315-638-2519 or send an email to blnc@ongov.net.


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Unfortunately, the event description seems to have been taken from our last Beaver Lake session – Venus won’t be present by event start (having set about three hours before sunset), but a sliver of a crescent moon will be visible for most of the session in close proximity to Mars. Jupiter remains an excellent summer scope target this year and for several years to come.

This outdoor lecture by CNY Observers will describe the history of the spring constellations and offer tips for remembering their relative positions. The moon will be the featured object for the night, with Jupiter and Venus also prominent, making for great views with the telescopes that will be present. (Cloud date is May 4.)

TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique: “So Much To Know About GMO, Our Friend Or Our Foe? Analyzing The Controversial Genetically Modified Organism”

Saturday – January 21, 9:30-11:00am

Milton J Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology – Syracuse, NY


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Please RSVP to jrcafe@tacny.org

Speaker:

Sara Velardi, MS, PhD Candidate in Environmental and Natural Resources Policy at SUNY ESF

Talk Overview:

So what exactly is a GMO? Why, a genetically modified organism of course! GMOs have been a popular topic in mass media today with opponents and supporters passionately stating their arguments for or against them. In this talk we will discuss the many sides of the coin in the debate surrounding GMOs and if we will expect to see a GMO label on our food in the future.

Biography:

Sara Velardi’s PhD research focuses on public perceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the policy surrounding the regulation and labeling of GMOs. She has presented her current research at the New York State Biotechnology Symposium and the International Rural Sociology Conference in Toronto. Her previous Master’s research focused on science educators’ professional development in environmental education. Specifically she worked on the environmental education program Project Learning Tree. Sara got to explore her love for outdoor education as a naturalist at Beaver Lake Nature Center in Baldwinsville, New York while working on her Master’s degree. Sara has a love for teaching and has worked with SUNY-ESF Outreach in the past on various STEM mentoring and ESF SCIENCE summer camp adventures. She has taught biology at Onondaga Community College and hopes to continue teaching throughout her career. She has also had the great opportunity to be a Graduate Ambassador for the Graduate School at SUNY-ESF and give campus tours to prospective students. In her free time she likes to go hiking around Central New York and hold Jodi Picoult mini book clubs with her mom.

TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique

TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique, a program for middle-school students founded in 2005, features discussions about topics in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an informal atmosphere and seeks to encourage students to consider careers in these areas. Students must be accompanied by an adult and can explore the MOST at no cost after the event.

Technology Alliance of Central New York

Founded in 1903 as the Technology Club of Syracuse, the nonprofit Technology Alliance of Central New York’s mission is to facilitate community awareness, appreciation, and education of technology; and to collaborate with like-minded organizations across Central New York.

For more information about TACNY, visit www.tacny.org.

CNYO Spring 2016 Observing Session At Beaver Lake Nature Center On Thursday, April 28th (Raindate: May 5th)

FINAL UPDATE: 4 May – 2:00 p.m. – The weather for tomorrow night is predicted to be lousy for observing, so we’re making the official call early to CANCEL tomorrow night’s event at Beaver Lake Nature Center. Stay tuned for an event announcement about The Mercury Transit happening on May 9th!

UPDATE: 28 April – 2:00 p.m. – Sadly, the cloud cover is not agreeable for observing tonight (as also reported by Glenn Coin at syracuse.com), so we are pushing the observing session off to next Thursday, May 5th. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: 28 April – 10:00 a.m. – The sky conditions for tonight are not looking good for observing. We’ll make a final call around 2:00 p.m. and, if necessary, plan for next Thursday instead.

H/T to Glenn Coin for posting the announcement to syracuse.com (and various related pick-up CNY sites).

Greetings, fellow astrophiles!

The time has come again to make our seasonal Thursday night trek [beaver lake announcement; meetup.com event] to the Beaver Lake parking lot for views of the Nighttime Spring Sky. For 2016, we’ve the added bonus of having prime planetary viewing for the entire session, featuring Mercury to our West just after sunset (and even before if Bob Piekiel’s GOTO scope is ready) and Jupiter, biting at the feet of Leo the Lion, in the sky throughout – having reached opposition in early March.

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Views from the 2006 Transit of Mercury. Photo from nationalgeographic.com

Mercury will be giving us a double-dose of observing in the next few weeks as we approach its Transit on the morning of May 9th (for which Bob Piekiel is hosting a special (and unusually early!) event at Baltimore Woods from 8 to 10 a.m. On Monday, May 9th – event notice to follow!). For those who managed a view of the Transit of Venus in 2012, this is your chance to say you saw the only two planetary Transits you can from Earth – you’ll then have to move to Mars to try to make any kind of inferior planet trifecta.


Google map for Beaver Lake Nature Center. Click to get directions.

LeoTripletHunterWilsonThe Thursday session at Beaver Lake will be our last chance to see any sign of the Orion Nebula (and it will be heroic observing at that, given how close to the tree line it may be by the time it’s dark enough), but M13 in Hercules, the Leo Triplet (shown at right – and they will not look this good from Beaver Lake! Image from wikipedia.org), several other notable Messier Objects, and whatever satellites happen to fly over will be on hand to keep the observing and conversation going.

By the usual ending time for the event, the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra will just be rising above the Northeastern skyline, striking the chord to herald the soon-approaching return of Summer Skies and our views into the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy.

CNYO Observing Log: Perseid Week @ Marcellus Library, Baltimore Woods, Beaver Lake, and Green Lakes, 11 – 14 August 2015

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

2015aug25_two-moons-hoaxThis was, far and away, the busiest and best-attended Perseid Meteor Shower week in my history as a CNY-residing amateur astronomer, ranking third overall in public interest behind a Darling Hill Observatory session for the closest approach of Mars in 2003 (the origin of that completely useless meme about Mars and the Moon appearing the same size this (and nearly every one since 2003) August) and the Transit of Venus event held along the Armory Square Creekwalk back in 2012. I would argue that a large part of this local interest (as pertaining to CNYO events, anyway) was due to the efforts of Glenn Coin at syracuse.com in keeping science (and, specifically, space science) in the local paper/websites. His articles following the days approaching, as well as the instigation of we locals to take another shot or two at seeing anything on alternatively partly-cloudy nights, can be found at the links below:

* 6 Aug – Catch the Perseid meteor shower at Baltimore Woods viewing party (by Emily Nichols)

* 10 Aug – Perseid meteor shower: What’s the best night to see it in CNY?

* 12 Aug – ‘Amazing’ Perseid meteor shower: When, where and how to see it in Central NY

* 12 Aug – Perseid meteor shower update: CNY skies should be mostly clear for peak

* 13 Aug – Miss the Perseid meteor shower last night? Try tonight

* 13 Aug – Perseid meteor shower: Watch video of amazing display above the Finger Lakes (by Lauren Long)

Our continued thanks to Glenn Coin and syracuse.com for covering the big yearly astronomy events!

Solar Observing Session At Marcellus Free Library, August 11th

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sunspots_1024_20150811Our Perseid week actually started in the daytime, with a Solar Observing Session run by Bob Piekiel as part of a How-To Festival at Marcellus Free Library on Tuesday, August 11. Like the Sun itself, the Sun’s importance in irradiating comets as they pass into the inner Solar System and melt enough to leave the trails of cosmic debris that become our yearly meteor showers cannot go unnoticed. This session featured Bob’s Coronado 90 mm H-alpha scope, a small Baader’ed refracting scope, and Christopher Schuck’s Coronado PST. Over the course of about 90 minutes (from the session start to the Sun slipping behind the high tree line), we had about 25 people cycle past the scopes to observe numerous medium-sized prominences and a reasonably clear Sunspot 2396 (click the image at right for a larger view from NASA/SOHO).

Besides the continuous dialog about all things solar, more than a few attempts to capture images through the scopes were had. While smartphones are not the ideal gear for accomplishing this (due to both the difficulty in proper placement and the relative sensitivity of the sensors to monochromatic light (in our cases, the dark red H-alpha band)), Chris did manage a pic that included multiple prominences, one power line, and the ever-constraining tree line (below).

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Smartphone Coronado PST pic by Christopher Schuck. Click for a larger view.

A Three-For: Baltimore Woods (Aug. 12th), Beaver Lake (Aug. 13th), and Green Lakes (Aug. 14th)

Bob and I handled scope and lecture duties for the three peak Perseid nights, hitting well-separated locations and a few overlapping attendees. As all three sessions were nearly identical in their content and observing targets, I’ll briefly summarize the unique aspects of each event before giving the combined (and nearly identical) observing lists.

Baltimore Woods (August 12th)

With the best time for the Perseids predicted to be between the late evening of the 12th and 13th, Baltimore Woods Nature Center was predictable busy. Attendees began to arrive around 8 p.m., with total attendance maxing out at about 65 people (and the parking lot itself maxing out before that). With an introductory lecture and white light warning provided, the entire 8:30 to near-11:00 p.m. session only included three shooting stars. Two were moderately bright (and fleeting). A third, the best of all three days, hit atmosphere above a large set of clouds, yet was bright enough to light the clouds like a green-twinged lightning bolt.

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Bob Piekiel and the calm before the storm.

The evening itself turned out mostly cloudy, providing just enough open pockets of dark sky for views of Saturn, a few Messiers, some Constellation touring, one ISS pass, and the three observed meteors that graced the skies that night. Cloud cover became all-consuming just after 10:30 p.m. and we packed up and were gone by 11:00 p.m.

In the interest of trying to catch at least one Perseid by photo, I trekked out to Cazenovia Lake around 4:00 a.m. in 30 minutes of trying, I managed only a single shooter (in the image below, it looks like a white arrow (at bottom) pointing to some dim objects).

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A sharp streak of a Perseid in an otherwise poorly-balanced image. Click for a larger view.

Beaver Lake Nature Center (August 13th)

CNYO’s official seasonal Beaver Lake Nature Center session was greatly simplified by having the Baltimore Woods session the night before (meaning Bob and I could attend both sessions with no overlap). With the session moved from the Beaver Lake rotunda to the overflow parking, we found ourselves in a darker, lower tree-lined, and easy to arrange location (meaning we may request that all future sessions be held in the same spot!). Beaver Lake skies were not much clearer than Baltimore Woods, but the waits between observables was shorter and our ability to cycle through objects and attendees was improved. With additional announcements on syracuse.com, the final Beaver Lake count was five meteors and about 75 people from our 8:30 introductions to 11:00 p.m. pack-up.

Green Lakes State Park (August 14th)

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Upcoming festivities announced during our session.

Our Green Lakes State Park session in July peaked near 120 people (some for the stars, some for the s’mores), which is quite a crowd for 3 scopes! Despite the predictions of clearer skies than previous days and generally excellent evening weather, the August session capped itself at about 70 people (with a bunch of them being young amateur astronomers who packed it in early, leaving a smaller group of about 15 to stay until our 11:00 p.m. Ending to pick off several Messiers after Saturn slid behind Green Lakes’ high southern tree line. Going solely by “ooh-and-aah” statistics, Green Lakes attendees may have seen a total of 5 Perseids (none rivaling the one from Baltimore Woods, but easily seen in the mostly clear skies above).

Observing List (More Of The Summer Same, And For Good Reason)

As has been discussed many times on this website, the importance of introducing new observers to easily observed and described objects cannot be understated. The hunt for dim NGCs and equally dim Messiers is always worthwhile with sufficient time and clear skies, but the brand new observer (arguably) benefits more from prominent views of objects such as the Moon, M13 in Hercules, Alcor and Mizar, M57 (the Ring Nebula) in Lyra, The Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and the bright visible planets each evening. These objects are easily seen by anyone approaching the eyepiece and can be used to give new observers a kind of “upper limit” on their expectations of what a scope is capable of magnifying from ground level. Amateur astronomy, like chess, can become a lifelong training in subtlety. That said, the mechanics are easy to learn by slowly introducing the many kinds of players.

With two scopes and +60 attendees at each session, we were definitely limited in our observing variety simply by the lengths of the lines behind each scope. That said, we were able to give all of the patient attendees some great views of the night’s best for each Perseid session. The short list of objects is below (listed according to the order in which they’re observable as the skies get darker and darker):

* Saturn (our bright planet for the Summer and Fall)
* Alcor and Mizar in Ursa Major, Albireo in Cygnus, Herschel’s Garnet Star in Cepheus
* M13 (globular cluster) in Hercules, M57 (The Ring Nebula) in Lyra
* M27 (The Dumbbell Nebula) in Velpecula
* M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy) and M32 (one of its two satellite galaxies) in Andromeda
* M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy) in Canes Venatici

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M13, M57, and M27. Photos by Bob Piekiel. Click for a larger view.

In closing, we had an excellent week-long turnout for the sessions and are grateful to everyone who came out to make this a busy Perseid show. We hope all of the new faces on our meetup and Facebook pages keep track of upcoming events – and we hope to see your dark, featureless outlines at another 2015 session!

CNYO’s Perseid Meteor Shower Events – Baltimore Woods, Beaver Lake, And Green Lakes

UPDATE, 5:00 P.M. FRI, AUG 14 – The forecast predicts rain and cloud cover followed by improving conditions, so tonight’s Green Lakes Session is A GO to finish up our Perseid Week Observing Sessions. See below for details.

UPDATE, 2:30 P.M. THU, AUG 13 – The forecast is predicted to be reasonable for tonight, so our Beaver Lake Session is A GO.

THAT SAID – Beaver Lake has now closed registration because they’ve hit a high attendance number. Please consider our Green Lakes session this Friday/Saturday (check back for weather updates – see below for more info).

UPDATE, 4:45 P.M. WED, AUG 12 – Partly cloudy = partly clear, so we’ll be having the Baltimore Woods session tonight for the Perseid Meteor Shower. See below for details and registration information.

Greetings, fellow astrophiles – and those from Glenn Coin’s recent syracuse.com articles [1, 2, 3]!

We’ll be updating the list below with weather and official confirm/cancel announcements for our Perseid sessions. Please check back at 5:00 p.m. each day for final calls, then hope for clear skies the next few days!

To register for the Baltimore Woods and Beaver Lake sessions, please use the provided links. For questions or comments to us, please send your email to info@cnyo.org or use the Contact Form on our website.

Baltimore Woods Nature Center

* Wednesday, 12 August, 9 – 11 p.m.IS ON FOR TONIGHT!
* NOTE: Please register (LINK HERE) so they have an official head count.

Beaver Lake Nature Center

* Thursday, 13 August, 8:30 – 11:00 p.m.IS ON FOR TONIGHT!
* NOTE: Please register (LINK HERE) so they have an official head count.

Green Lakes State Park

* Friday, 14 August, 8 – 10:30 p.m. – Weather Pending (check back at 5 p.m.)
* Saturday, 15 August, 8 – 10:30 p.m. – Weather Alternate (check back at 5 p.m.)