On Wednesday I went to the weekly Wednesday night Uof U Astro Club open house on the top of the South Physics Building. Physics majors Paul Ricketts and Greg Engh were the docents. I took a box of lenses and an observing chair along up the roof elevator for a night of urban astronomy - running through double stars and other bright targets of opportunity. ZLM was around 3 to 4 with an 11 or 12 mag limit in the eyepiece. Paul set me up on one of the pier mounted Meade LX200's. The south Physics building roof has a relaxed atmosphere - just Paul and Greg in the dome and a few students wandering in over the course of the night. This was ideal for a little after work doubles or to get the chance to learn a high-end SCT. Since I use a GEM Newt most of the night was taken up learning LX200 operations and the controller. The pier-mounted scope easily single star aligned and then successfully slewed to M84, the heart of the Markovian Chain. The light pollution was such that only M84 was distinctly visible in the central Virgo cluster. The LX200 tracked solidly but being a student scope, the manual focus had a distinct dead spot. Otherwise the scope was outstanding and includes an auto-focus drive. The scope has a "classic" style hand-controller. I rattled off a few doubles including 40 LMi, 2 CVn and nu Leo and then split eps Boo for some students. Then I turned to practicing on bright stars with my Rainbow Optics broadband spectrometer including Arcturus and Denebola. Later in the night Jupiter rose. With the third-quarter Moon below the horizon, Vesta was easily seen even through the heaviest Salt Lake urban light pollution. I showed a couple of students on a date how to slew and focus the scope on a low-lying Jupiter. The night wrapped up with Paul showing me a planetary nebulae with the 14 inch dome scope and an unsuccessful attempt to find Comet Lovejoy C2007E2. All in all, I would highly recommend the weekly Wednesday night summer sessions to any other SLAS member. Good equipment, a relaxed atmosphere and pleasant accomodating hosts make for a good after work session. Check out the UofU Astro calendar on Wednesday afternoon to make sure that week's session is still on. http://web.utah.edu/astro/ Although I went during a university break week, parking on the U circle was not a problem. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net