Astronomy Night in Wildomar!

Thank you to Joseph Morabito for this blog on a fun local event. Now that we have parks, that means we will have events again! I recommend checking the city Park link for to stay informed. Also for updates on other events go to the city website and select "Stay Connected". For this blog with more pictures go to http://wildomarrap.blogspot.com/2014/05/astronomy-night-in-wildomar.html 

What a great event for Wildomar.

Many thanks to John Garrett and Temecula Valley Astronomers for the enjoyable presentation and setting up their telescopes and allowing others to take a look at the night sky with them.

Looking at the Sun through a telescope was a first for me. They use special filters so you can safely view it and see 'bumps' around the edge of the Sun. I learned they are called a prominence.

Ashley Fox chatted with me about her Girl Scout Silver Award project (click this link to read what a silver award is).  I'm going to write up a blog about her project soon. In brief, her goal is to raise $3500 for a swing that will accommodate those in a wheel chair. Before tonight she'd already gotten half way there with $1800 raised. Tonight they added nearly another $300 to the total. The next fund raiser is atStadium Pizza on Monday May 12th.

SunPro Solar donated 12 of these telescopes to be raffled off. All those in attendance were giving a raffle ticket, free of charge, and there were two drawings throughout the course of events.

It's hard to judge crowd size, but it safe to say there were more than a baker's dozen and less than 1,000. Ok, my real guess would be around 200 people. More thanks goes to city staffers that put in a long day. 

As I was chatting with Public Works Superintendent Les Chapman, I like how he put it. That these kinds of events are what make us a community, and he'd like to see more of them. I was telling him about times I've driven to neighboring cities to listen to live music in the park while having a picnic, and he thought that would work well here too.
We just need to get our parks department up and running.

Follow this link if you aren't already subscribed to the city of Wildomar's email alerts. It's the best way to keep up with when things are happening.