Gaze at stars at Deerlick Astronomy Village in Taliaferro County

TALIAFERRO COUNTY, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Did you know the CSRA is an ideal spot for stargazing? There are local astronomy enthusiasts who help make contributions to national science journals about the stars and planets.

Meteorologist Mikel Hannah-Harding tracked them down to see how they do their star gazing.

The Deerlick Astronomy Village was developed way back in 2006 and has been providing amazing opportunities for stargazing and more ever since.

Dan Llewllyn, an astronomy imager, says, “It’s unique there are not many villages around the U.S. and this is the only one in Georgia.”

Named after a group of galaxies, the village is only an hour from Augusta and is situated in one of the darkest locations in the southeast.

Llewllyn says, “We’re away from the light pollution of Atlanta and Augusta has some light pollution as well, Athens has some light pollution. So we’re sort of in a sweet spot here in eastern Georgia.”

And the distance away from light pollution makes all the difference.

“You can come out and enjoy the dark sky with a telescope visually or you can do a lot of powerhouse imaging like planetary imaging and deep sky imaging,” Llewllyn says.

Astronomy enthusiasts here spend thousands of dollars building their observatories and purchasing state-of-the-art telescopes as well.

Daniel Ford, manager at Deerlick Group, LLC., says, “What we call Dobsonian telescopes which are strictly visual but can be adapted for cameras. We also have a lot of equatorial telescopes and mounts where the telescopes are guided to help with imaging.”

“The images that I take out here absolutely beat some of the images you see from some of the world’s biggest observatories,” Llewllyn says.

And images from the village have been used in scientific articles from NASA, the British Astronomical Association, and more.

So if you’re an astronomy lover and a fan of the night sky, consider getting a membership with the Deerlick Astronomy Village.

They are having an open house on April 15th at 5 p.m. for the general public and will last as long as people want to stay out there.

This astronomy village is special because it was designed by astronomy enthusiasts to be a haven for astronomical imaging and observing.

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