A trip to a local astronomy club

Seagrave Memorial Observatory in Scituate Rhode Island

I had visited this observatory about five years ago. It was a good trip for me and I remember the visit. But this time around I just had such a good time. It was a beautiful evening in late September. The weather was warm and the sky was clear and dark!

And of course I wanted to get another look at their fantastic telescope. It is an Alvan Clark and it is 140 years old. Love this telescope. They had it trained on Saturn and the ringed planet looked great. It was very crisp and clear. Maybe it is my imagination but these old simple refractor telescopes seem to just show celestial objects better than the newer telescopes, no matter what the size.

Here on this page I have a few more pictures of the telescope but I also wanted to talk about this astronomy club a little bit. (The Skyscrapers). They are an active astronomy club with a long history and they have an open to the public event on Saturday nights between 7 and 9 pm – weather permitting..

While I was there a stream of general public visitors stopping in to get a look through the various telescopes.

And the club has several telescopes including this 8″ Alvan Clark a 16″ Meade Schmidt Cassegrain, and a 12″ Meade Schmidt Cassegrain. It was a good night and I got to see a whole bunch of celestial objects including Saturn, M31, M13, M71 and the Albireo double star which showed a little bit of color differential.

There are a few more astronomy clubs that want to visit soon but I definitely will be going back to this one. Be sure to check out their website: The Skyscrapers