Imaginarium of Nevada County

SKY SHOW Program

Photograph by Jim Eiselt, Nevada City, CA.

Although the Imaginarium museum has closed, the  Sky Show program will continue as it has for the last 10 years,  April through November.  Scroll down to see the 2010 SKY SHOW schedule (or click here).

The SKY SHOWS are held at Tobaissen Park near the Madelyn Helling Library. The library is near the county Rood Center facility off of Highway 49. It’s about two miles northwest of downtown Nevada City. Park in the library lot and walk up the road about 100 yards to the baseball field. We’ll be out on the field with telescopes and binoculars.

These SKY SHOW events are all on a Friday night. If some special astronomical event appears like a bright comet or eclipse, then we may have additional sky shows, or combine the event with an existing show. It may be necessary to reschedule a show for unforeseen circumstances, so always check the Union Prospector section on the Thursday prior to the scheduled date.

The shows begin about one hour after sunset, and it generally takes 90 minutes for total darkness after it sets. It’s quite possible that we might have a talk or video one hour prior to the start time on occasion.

We generally view double stars, globular clusters, near star clusters, galaxies, planets, and nebula. The museum owns several scopes for the shows: 6" computerized refractor, 5" Schmidt-Cass, 8" Schmidt-Cass, and a solar telescope. The solar telescope is used for day time viewing of the sun for special museum functions. A solar filter allows us to use the 8" telescope for daytime solar viewing too.