Gallery - Chiefland Astronomy

Astrofest 2024

Food, fun, a raffle for many door prizes, a swap meet, and meeting many old and new friends. With over 80 people attending Astrofest 2024, only clear nights and some with the excellent seeing that Chiefland is famous for, we had a great stargazing experience in 2024. We also had some outstanding speakers, and, thanks to our sponsor, a very impressive set of raffle prizes. We enjoyed many deep-sky splendors and some views of Jupiter and Saturn that were truly out of this world, such as seeing surface details on Jupiter’s moons.If you are interested in sponsoring Astrofest 2025 and providing a raffle prize, please contact us at chieflandastro@gmail.com.

Grilling for the Picnic — Astrofest would not be the same without our traditional picnic. Mat and Pat made sure that we all had plenty of food. Thanks to all the volunteers for helping set up and cook the food.

Prof. Terry Oswalt speaking about the SOFIA mission. — Prof. Terry Oswalt from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University gave an impressive talk about the SOFIA mission, a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to construct and operate an airborne observatory.

Dr. Jeffrey Martin talking about Star Party Wow Moments and his adventures during the Apollo mission to the moon. — Dr. Jeffrey Martin not only entertained the large crowd with fun facts from various star parties but also told us about his incredible adventure as a teenager with his friends in the summer of 1969. Jeffrey and three other 14-year-olds planned, built, and “flew” a mock-up of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on a ten-day simulated Apollo 11 mission in Central Florida during the exact same time that the real Apollo 11 Moon mission took place in the summer heat of July 16-26, 1969!

Watching Jupiter before sunrise with moments of incredible seeing — We were very fortunate this year to not only have perfectly clear skies every night, but also to have incredible seeing on several nights. In the early morning hours, Richard Hennig is stunned by the details visible in Jupiter’s clouds through Larry Arbeiter’s 32-inch telescope. That morning, we even saw hints of surface structures on Jupiter’s moons.

Raffle of the wonderful door prizes provided by our sponsors — We had a full house during our raffle of the wonderful door prizes. Thanks to all our sponsors for the many door prizes. All the equipment was quickly put to use that night after the raffle under the clear dark skies of Chiefland.

Eyepieces at the Chiefland Telescope Museum

This year, we opened our new Telescope Museum at the Chiefland Astronomy Village to showcase some of the classic telescopes that got us started looking up at the sky and some that we admired as teenagers in colorful ads in Sky & Telescope and Astronomy Magazine.

Astrofest 2023

Food, fun, a raffle for many door prizes, a swap meeting, and meeting many old and new friends. With over 80 people attending Astrofest 2023 and a couple of clear nights for observing and imaging, we had a good start for our annual Astrofest.

With a wonderful clear first night and a few hours of clear skies on the second night, we enjoyed the dark skies and deep-sky splendors.

Joe and Gay Haldeman spent all day making sure everybody gets their registration information and their astro travel tumbler.

Our traditional picnic — Astrofest would not be the same without our traditional picnic. Thanks to all the volunteers for helping set up and cook the food.

Prof. Amy Williams, Geological Sciences, University of Florida – Presentation on NASA Rovers Curiosity and Perseverance Exploration of Mars. — Prof. Amy Williams gave a fascinating talk on NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.

Dr. Jerry Cheney – Presentation on Planetary Nebula. — Dr. Jerry Cheney showed us not only the beauty of planetary nebula but also explained their astrophysical origin.

Ken Verderame's Presentation on Night Vision Astronomy — Ken Verderame’s presentation showed us how even dim deepsky objects can show impressive detail when using a night vision device.

Prof. Hal McAlister – Presentation on Zooming in on the Stars from Mount Wilson with Astronomical Interferometry. — Prof. Hal McAlister, the former director of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, gave a fascinating presentation about zooming in on the Stars from Mount Wilson with astronomical interferometry.

Thanks to our sponsors for the many door prizes.

Spring Picnic 2023

Food, fun, a swap meeting, and meeting many old and new friends. With over 50 people coming to the spring picnic and many spending the night observing and imaging, this years Chiefland Spring Picnic had a wonderful revival.