A weekend of brews and views: SkiesAway celebrates its launch party at the Cosmic Brewery in Torrance.

 

With our website up and our events now booking through the rest of the year, it was time to showcase SkiesAway in style with telescopes, beer, and a clear autumn gibbous Moon to end the evening.  After half expecting rain in our forecast, the weather actually cooperated!  We powered up our live imager and displayed the colorful binary, Albireo, The “Double Cluster”  NGC 869 & 884, The “Ring Nebula” M57, and The “Apple Core Nebula” M27 – all in color, and all from light-polluted Torrance.

We provided telescope views of Saturn early in the evening before the ringed planet set.  Then shortly after the bright gibbous Moon treated everyone to tremendous telescope views.  Several guests also had the chance to capture their own Moon image from their phones.  We also presented techniques on imaging the Moon which everyone was able to immediately try out with our telescope setups.

 

Cosmic Brewery was a great host, as always.  We also enjoyed S+M Vegan‘s food service – the fried ravioli was something of a revelation.  Looking forward to the next star-filled event!