Rocky Mountain National Park scheduled an Astyronomy Festival for Aug 2-3, 2024. They had guest speakers from various institutions. They had solar observing during the day and were to have night time observing at the Upper Beaver Meadows Trailhead (UBMT), but that was canceled. There were two large forest fires about 10 miles to the northeast from the Park. The night time observing was canceled because embers from those fires can drift several miles on the wind, land on the ground, and start a new fire. There is one road into the UBMT and if a fire had started at the entrance of that road, all the people and cars would have been trapped and unable to get out. So they decided to cancel that event.
I helped show the park guests the sun both afternoons. I setup up in front of the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center. There were a number of guests that stopped to use the restrooms and visit the Center. A perfect location to maximize the number of guests that I could show the sun too.
The following pictures were from Friday Aug 2.
I setup this table with all the Solar System Ambassador handouts I received for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse event.
The guests enjoyed these free items.
I used my 8-inch telescope with my Baader solar filter on the front to show the guests the sun.
On Aug 2, there were many clouds that drifted over the sun, making it difficult to show everyone the sun. There were long waits for the sun to reappear with a brief appearance before it was covered up again.
The number of sunspots on the surface of the sun were many. It was the most sunspots I have ever seen at one time on the disk of the sun.
A Ranger took this picture out of his office window. He was impressed at the number of guests that stopped by my telescope.
Another Ranger took these next 3 pictures.
When the sun finally popped out from behind a cloud, I was able to show the guests the sun and sunspots.
The sky was much better on Saturday Aug, 3. The clouds stayed away from the sun and the smoke from the nearby fires was somewhere else. There were less sunspots on the solar disk than yesterday, yet still more than I normally see on the sun, except for the number I saw yesterday.
Greg Merano, from the Northern Coloraso Astronomy Club, was there with his 8-inch telescope and a hydrogen-aplha solar telescope. There were lots of big prominances around the solar disk that changed after just a few minutes.
