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Fabulous Fall Star Party 2007
Here's Doug's observing report from the Fabulous Fall Star Party, October 13, 2007:
Aloha all,
We had a small, but nice turnout last night for our star party, and
the weather behaved pretty much as on Friday night, but with just a
smidgen more clouds at sunset. However, the very minor clouds were
no problem whatsoever except to prevent us from watching the last
gasps of the crescent moon go down. I thought the seeing was good
but not spectacular, with light winds and warm temps. No dew again
last night....a person could get pretty spoiled in those conditions.
Our cookout featured a little bit of everything....brats, hotdogs, a
couple kinds of salads, some monster avocados, chips, drinks, and
some dessert (cookies & ice cream). Thanks to everyone who brought
something, helped cook, and/or cleaned up. A special mention to
Bernt who did all the shopping for us. Thank you all for
contributing and participating.
Dr. Mark spent some time with Tony before dinner to help sort out
what was the issue with the club scope, and got it producing nice
views again.... A little dew/light shield should help out with
viewing in Waikoloa's light dome (we hope). We looked at multiple
objects with the scope after dark...it needs a working finderscope to
help get the "found object count" up, but Tony's working on that.
Hopefully, it's just a battery for the red-dot finder.
After dinner and cleanup, we all got to business and started our
various observing programs. Doug's attempt at "group comet
discovery" was attempted but aborted when the comets couldn't even be
found using the ephemerides stored in his computer. Not sure yet
what went wrong, but I'll research this and report back at the next
club meeting. We did check out the moons of Uranus
together...success. Doug spent some time with a group looking at
the "cherry bomb" open cluster which was a fun exercise in
imaginative power. We then spent quite a bit of time on the
showpiece objects, this time with an interesting twist. Most folks
look at and know the showpieces well....we all look at them a million
times. Well, for those who weren't there, let me tell you, we saw
some of these objects in ways I have never seen them before (and
that's saying something). Cliff brought his I3 image intensifier
tube with a hydrogen alpha filter (sorry, no 24" this time), and we
used it in the 22" for a dream trip through some normally very
difficult visual objects.
While we looked at many objects, all of which gave interesting and
sometimes different views compared to regular eyepieces, the items I
remember most include the M16 pillars of creation (or the
squirrel/chicken depending on your imagination), M17/Swan, Helix,
Veil, Ring Nebula, Crab Nebula, NGC 1365 barred spiral, NGC253,
NGC891, Orion nebula, Flame, and of course the Horsehead. My
personal favorites among this list were the horsehead and the Helix.
An odd but nice side effect of the tube is that the image is 180
degrees inverted. Thus,the horsehead was upright! And when I say
horsehead, I mean the whole head....ears, face, mouth...the real
deal! Wow...no way to describe it; you had to see it to believe it.
On the Helix, we saw the normally offset two regular shells of gas,
and a nice partial 3rd shell from an earlier episode (I didn't even
know this extra shell existed). I'll venture a guess that this shell
is not visible under any circumstances with normal gear...so it was a
nice treat to see it visually. The central star of the ring nebula
was poking out in its irregularly normal way using a 12mm Nagler
eyepiece, but with the I3 it was steady and visible at all times. A
quick check of the sky&tel article on limiting magnitudes of the
stellar environment around the ring against my memory of the field
shows we got well past 16th magnitude. NGC1365 sported a direct and
steady view of the bar and huge arms. I could go on and on regarding
details of specific objects, but I won't. Most of the views we saw
had a different emphasis than what's normally seen, so the views were
really interesting to compare against regular eyepieces.
We compared and constrasted different magnifications, filters, and
combinations of object types. It's always nice to have lots of
opinions and perspectives on gear, and everyone got a chance to see
for themselves the pros & cons of this eyepiece on the sky. Thanks
to Cliff for being generous and bringing the I3 to the party and
sharing it with the rest of us. It was a memorable evening. The sky
held up well and gave up great views of many objects. We had some
folks learn a bit about barlowed collimation, pointing models, mirror
cells, and telescope making. Add to this a great nightsky and I
think we can all call that success. I'm sure I forgot many details,
and others may want to give their own reports as they may have been
doing different projects that I'm unaware of. However, this report
is long enough already....I'm rambling.
So, another party is in the books. Tony, Kellee, and I closed the
event somewhere about 1:30-2:00am. The winds picked up about 1am,
and our scopes started to act a bit like big box kites. Since I had
spent a good deal of both Friday and Saturday nights at the site, I
took it as a good time to get some shuteye. One trip about the site
after packing up to make sure nothing was left behind, and we were
off.
Again, thanks to everyone who participated. While I enjoy going to
meetings, the real reason we have a club is to learn from each other
and to view together under the stars. Everyone has a perspective to
share. I look forward to our future star parties, and hope those who
missed out on this one will remember to carve out a place in your
calendars for Saturday, January 5th , when we'll do it all again at
our Winter Star Party. Until then, see you at the next meeting.
Clear skies,
Doug
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