The DC Women's Hiking Group will hike at Seth Low Pierrepont State Park this week on Oct. 5th and Oct. 7th.
Meet at 9:30am in the parking area off Barlow Mountain Rd. Near Scotland and Barlow Mountain Elementary Schools.

The DC Women's hiking group will hike Topstone Park in Redding, CT the week of Sept. 21st, meeting at 9:30am.
Take Topstone Rd. off of Rt. 7. Follow the road across the railroad tracks staying on Topstone Rd.
It will turn into a dirt road. Continue on road and there will be a parking area on the right.

Women Hiking Group - Week Sept 14

This week we move onto Aldrich Park for our twice weekly hike. The park has a series of woodland trails with many outcroppings of ledge, boulder fields, glacial erratics and stonewalls. As the mammoth glacier that covered Connecticut receded 15,000 years ago, it dropped the boulders it had picked up during its march south. These boulders have no relationship to the surrounding geological formations. They just appear erratically and thus they are called glacial erratics.

Meet Tues. and/or Thurs. at 9:30AM at the Aldrich Park parking lot just off New Road. It is not far from the intersection of Farmingville Road.

Jupiter - A Gas Giant

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter could hold more than 1,000 Earths. In the late summer, early autumn you can't miss it as it rises in the east shining brighter than any other object in the night sky (except the moon of course). It takes almost 12 Earth years for it to orbit the Sun but only 9 hours 56 minutes to spin around its axis. This fast rotation makes it bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles. It has 16 moons, rings and one big red spot. The Giant Red Spot is caused by winds spinning in opposite directions and has been observed for 300 years.

Only the Sun generates more radiation then Jupiter. This makes approaching it extremely dangerous. In August 2011, NASA will be launching a probe called Juno to explore it. To protect Juno's "brain from being fried" from such massive radiation, engineers added a unique protective shield around its sensitve electronics. This basically makes Juno into an flying armored tank.

Bennett's Pond

This week the Discovery Center Women Hiking Group will begin its twice weekly meetings in Ridgefield's largest open space Bennett's Pond. The 440 acres were acquired by the town via eminent domain in 2001 and conveyed to the State of Connecticut in 2002 to be made into a state park. It is made up of a variety of landscapes from meadows, woodlands, and wetlands to steep ridges. Its most profound feature is the 70-acre pond which is one of the sources of the Saugatuck River. This vital watershed supplies the drinking water for a good portion of lower Fairfield County.

Connecting to Wooster Mountain State Park and Ridgefield's Hemlock Hill/Pine Mountain/Lake Windwing Open Spaces, the area provides a large undeveloped habitat for a wide variety of wildlife. Marble underlies portions of the park which creates buffered soils that support some rare plant species. In the spring, numerous vernal pools provide nursery for woodland amphibians.

It contains 5 miles of hiking trails which range from easy to difficult. If this isn't enough, it connects to the Ives Trail an interconnecting greenway from Ridgefield to Bethel, CT. Bennett's Pond is indeed a town and state treasure.

The DC Women's Hiking Group will start up hiking this week on Tues., Sept. 7th at Bennetts Pond.
We will meet in the parking lot at 9:30am.

Perseid Meteor Shower

August is the time for the most famous of all meteor (falling or shooting star) showers, the Perseids. Beginning in late July and running through about August 22, the Perseids provide the majority of meteors seen by the general public. Coming out of the constellation Perseus, they appear in the northeastern sky usually at about 11 pm and increase in frequency with most appearing in the hours after midnight. On the night of August12/13, their frequency should peak at a rate of 50-80 meteors per hour and then rapidly decline to about 10 per hour by August 15th. This year the moonless sky will provide great viewing.

To view the meteor shower, pick a dark spot away from ground lights and facing the NE. Lie on your back or position yourself so the horizon appears at the edge of your peripheral vision, with star and sky filling out your field of view. Take some time for your eyes to adapt to the dark and avoid lights like flashlights. Bug spray, food, and drinks make the evening more pleasurable. Binoculars are not necessary as your adapted night vision will do just fine. Enjoy!