This took place Saturday night, July 25. The park is near Gladstone, VA, so it’s quite a hike from Richmond. 85 miles, in fact.
But, they have quite a setup, as you can see from the picture at left. There’s a large covered pavilion, with electricity, and the rangers provided a projector. They also have a telescope on site (courtesy of RAS).
John Barnett gave a presentation to the audience of some of his astroonomy pictures , and talked about RAS and its observatory in Richmond.
It’s normally a dark site, and I was eager to see what we could see as it got dark, but the skies did not cooperate. We had a small window, where we showed views of the moon and Saturn, but that was about it.
The saving grace was that we did get to see a gorgeous pass of the ISS, and that really wowed the audience. Because of the gather clouds, attendance was not what we had hoped for, but we did yave about 15 adulta and kids there for the show.