Following is an excerpt from an update by Jim (our VP) on our April Star Party. Out of all the star parties scheduled for this Week of Astronomy, this was the only one that wasn’t cancelled due to weather! It turned out great! To view this thread in the forum go to: http://www.csastro.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3516&highlight= There are also additional pictures in the gallery! – http://www.csastro.org/forums/modules.php?set_albumName=album15&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php
Skies cleared for the most part. Just a tad breezy and quite chilly but overall not too bad. Seeing was not as good as I had hoped with the muck in the air and of course the moon.
BobV’s new 20″ Starmaster took first light and it was quite an awesome site to behold. Several times during the night I would go see what he was looking at and then run back to my scope to compare. The biggest WOW I got was some moons of Saturn. In BobV’s we had the three brightest (will have to go look up the names) as well as two very distinct moons close to the rings. In my scope there was ONLY the three bright moons, the two that I observed in BobV’s scope were no where to be found in mine. That’s just frakkin awesome!!
I’m quite sure that BobV will be very very happy with his newest acquisition for quite some time to come.
We must have had 15 scopes out there though. Pretty good turnout despite the chilly weather.
Don’t think we got close to a 100 visitors but we did have a fair amount. I’m thinking we also had at least 30 PPCC students in that crowd.
Saturn and the Moon were viewed quite often. M13, M3, M42 and some doubles were also viewed.
Al, myself and some others took pictures early on. I’ll get mine posted here later as I’m sure Al will as well.
We started about 7:30 and went till 10:30.
Again…please pipe up with your name here if I don’t get it listed…
BobV, PapaJ, Bruce, KenF, Dennis, Floyd, Cindi, JimU, Al, JohnH, and others whose names escape me at the moment and myself.
Much thanx to all of those that helped support this event!
-JimW