Stars at West Sycamore
Join members from the San Diego Astronomy Association at the West Sycamore Staging Area to view the nighttime sky through telescopes. A dark moonless night at West Sycamore. Jupiter and Mars are visible as well as the Great Nebula in Orion. This is a great night to hunt for galaxies in the Constellation Leo, the Double Cluster in Perseus, and a bright globular cluster of 500,000 stars in Messier 3 (M3) in the constellation Canis Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Globular clusters are compact formations of tens of thousands to millions of gravitationally bound stars found in the halo of galaxies. M3 is bright and contains more than 500,000 stars. Near M3 is an interesting binary star. Binary stars consist of two stars gravitationally bound to each other and orbiting around a common center of mass. You can see the “split” of these two stars in amateur telescopes. Cor Caroli (Heart of Charles) is named after the beheaded King Charles I of England.
End of Stonebridge Parkway, Scripps Ranch (map) From I-15, go east on Pomerado Road and turn right on Stonebridge Parkway. The entrance to West Sycamore is at the very east end of Stonebridge Parkway. Starts at dusk. Park on the paved street and walk past the gate into the park where telescopes are set up. 32 55' 59.6"N 117 00' 01.5"W
Sunset 7:21