Starry Evergreen, at the Montgomery Hill Observatory

Free Public Stargazing event at the Montgomery Hill Observatory. This activity is weather-dependent. Please dress for cool to chilly weather.

Enjoy a free public stargazing event at the Montgomery Hill Observatory from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. View the skies with our main observatory telescope, our enhanced vision (EV) telescope, which will be projecting images being collected on site in real time, and several telescopes set out for the public. Kids and grownups alike learn how to use telescopes and identify objects in the sky!
A Night of Giants
We expect the “master of the rings”, the gas giant Saturn, to accompany us throughout the night. Currently, the rings are more edge-on, thus expecting that seeing the rings to be difficult to see. Saturn is not only a beautiful sight in the sky, but also named after the Roman god of sowing, reminding us of our inherent connection to nature.
The ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, will also be visible throughout the night. Expect these to be smaller balls, as they are further away in the sky. These giants are named after important Roman and Greek gods of the sky and the sea, inspiring countless stories throughout time, and as we learn more about these worlds, these planets inspire us today in our explorations of the solar system.
The King of the planets, Jupiter, was named after the principal god of the Roman pantheon. This planet will make its appearance towards the end of the night, and we hope to see it as it rises into the night sky as a grand finale of sorts. Jupiter’s red spot is an anticyclonic storm that we can observe when looking through the telescope. The size of this storm alone is slightly larger than the whole Earth!
Beyond our solar system
Using the various telescopes available to the public, we can find a variety of stars and a collection of stars and star dust. For instance, between the constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus, we can see the Perseus Double Cluster. Each cluster is made of a few hundred stars, and these stars are young, hot, Supergiant suns that are 7500 light-years from Earth. They're thousands of times more luminous than our Sun.
Another interesting target to look for in the night sky is in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. Look for his red eye - Alpha Tauri, a red giant star, aka Aldebaran. Also, looking a little higher above Aldebaran, you'll see "the 7 sisters", The Pleiades, M45, riding on the back of the Bull. So many myths and stories have been written about this star cluster from Asia, Europe, North/South America, Indonesia, Aboriginal Australia, and Africa. The Pleiades are 75 to 150 million years old, so they are fairly young stars, and they are 444 light-years away from Earth.
Join us as we explore larger astronomical structures deep in space with our enhanced vision (EV) telescope. One such structure is the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighboring galaxy at 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Andromeda is one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye with dark skies. Other objects of interest include other galaxies, such as the cigar galaxy, and nebulae like the snowball nebula and the dumbbell nebula.
Many stories have been inspired by these celestial objects over centuries, and as we study the night sky, we continue to get inspired today. I hope you can join us so we can get inspired together as a community and investigate the beauty of the night sky.