The only things I can add to Chuck's excellent report are to: 1) Thank Ann House specifically since if she had not suggested the eclipse watch, coordinated the food and coordinated with media I doubt the watch would have happened. 2) Note that Bruce and I will be working on the refractor tomorrow and hope to have it back on line soon (the problem, BTW, appears to be with the clutch). 3) Replay this picture of the eclipse as seen from Down under: http://www.poyntsource.com/Baker/eclipse.jpg pw On 28 Aug 2007, at 14:53, Chuck Hards wrote:
Nice eclipse, I watched everything from SPOC until a cloud covered the moon just before totality ended. I watched the final stages from home.
It was a deep eclipse, but not the darkest I have seen. Good color, a ruddy, rusty red-orange. No Helion flashes but several Aurigids and many sporadics- several that qualified as "fireballs". Actually a surprisingly good night for meteors. During totality Bruce and I were looking for deep-sky objects in our 70mm binos. I nabbed M27 and the Double Cluster.
I was glad that I opted for the 20 x 70mm binos over the 15x. The lunar limb showed better detail at 20x- and because Kurt was there it wasn't necessary to consult a lunar atlas to identify features (thanks Kurt!).
Good turnout at SPOC for an event in the wee hours. Mosquitos were not the problem that they were out there a few weeks ago. Many members of the press showed-up, all of whom seemed to be having a genuine good time themselves and not merely covering a story.
It was good to see everybody including some folks I haven't seen in some time. The only disappointment was that the "Andy" refractor is apparently "up on blocks" again, and I didn't get a view through it before it was shut down.
Thanks to SLAS and the event organizers for a wonderful time!