Re: [UVAA] Star party weekend - First Light
I can attest to the quality of the mirrors and scopes being produced in John & Lisa's class. Bob Taylor had his new 16" f/4.43 (correct me if I'm wrong Bob) up at Wolf Creek this Saturday night. A first class instrument both optically and in performance. We had to pear through gaps in the clouds but we had a good time as well. Iota Cas at about 90 power was very sharp and split cleanly (2.7" for the ac pair.) 7331 showed several satellite galaxies and Stephan's nearby was quite nice...you could see that the foreground galaxy in the cluster was more distinct than the others. NGC 246 in Cetus was very nice & mottled. NGC 7332/39 in Pegasus displayed themselves well...two edge-ons in a tight dance. Congrats Bob (John & Lisa too) on such a great scope! Dave B. On Monday, September 13, 2004, at 09:31 AM, David Trevino wrote:
I was fun indeed.
I don't know if someone else will write a report on it, but let me give a quick review.
For many of us in John and Lisa's class, it was First Light Night for our scopes. I am terrible remembering names, but there several scopes out there ranging from 10" to 16".
We all had a blast taking looks at great targets, like Andromeda (M31) The Hercules cluster (M13) and the Ring Nebula (M57). Later on the night we enjoyed views of the Veil Nebula and the North America Nebula.
Other highlights were that there was plenty of food and great company by all.
--- Don and Kathryn Mechling <dkmechling@herbsfirst.com> wrote:
Hi, I am copying this to the newsgroup from the aurora list. Just in case anyone will be up tonight.... Jo <<<There is a better than average (not great, but not bad either) chance for observing middle latitude auroral activity TONIGHT. The disturbance associated with the mid-latitude auroral activity watch arrived MUCH earlier than predicted, thanks to a fantastically rotten correlation between the observed inner-coronal shock velocity and the actual CME velocity. The disturbance has already arrived. At the present time, conditions are not particularly favorable for producing auroral storm activity. However, that could change in the next 12 to 18 hours. Carey Oler _______________________________________________ Forum mailing list, Forum@spacew.com http://www.spacew.com/mailman/listinfo/forum Image gallery: www.spacew.com/gallery>>>>
Patrick, do you have any local and updated information on this? It would be fun to catch it. -A
Hi, I am copying this to the newsgroup from the aurora list. Just in case anyone will be up tonight.... Jo
<<<There is a better than average (not great, but not bad either) chance for observing middle latitude auroral activity TONIGHT. The disturbance associated with the mid-latitude auroral activity watch arrived MUCH earlier than predicted, thanks to a fantastically rotten correlation between the observed inner-coronal shock velocity and the actual CME velocity. The disturbance has already arrived. At the present time, conditions are not particularly favorable for producing auroral storm activity. However, that could change in the next 12 to 18 hours.
Carey Oler _______________________________________________ Forum mailing list, Forum@spacew.com http://www.spacew.com/mailman/listinfo/forum Image gallery: www.spacew.com/gallery>>>>
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Thank you for the compliments Dave. A lot of work went into this class, and as you saw at the star party, the students did a good job. I was very impressed with many of the scopes, although I spent most of my time going around to each scope teaching each student how to collimate their scope. The down side, I missed all of those great objects you mentioned below. By around 1am, I got to set up my own scope, and we had some great views of the Veil, North American, and the Ring Nebula with fleeting glimpses of the central star. But soon, I had to retire to get some sleep. One highlight of the evening occurred around 1:30 am. We saw what looked like the ISS passing overhead. However the object exploded in an orange blue fireball which streaked bright blue across the sky until it nearly disappeared below the horizon casting moving shadows across the observing field as it passed overhead. What was odd was that this object traveled from North towards the South East while all of the other meteors traveled from the South West towards the North. John Zeigler www.johnstelescopes.com www.mirrorkits.com -----Original Message----- From: David L Bennett [mailto:dlbennett@mac.com] Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 10:26 AM To: Utah Valley Astronomy Association; utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [UVAA] Star party weekend - First Light I can attest to the quality of the mirrors and scopes being produced in John & Lisa's class. Bob Taylor had his new 16" f/4.43 (correct me if I'm wrong Bob) up at Wolf Creek this Saturday night. A first class instrument both optically and in performance. We had to pear through gaps in the clouds but we had a good time as well. Iota Cas at about 90 power was very sharp and split cleanly (2.7" for the ac pair.) 7331 showed several satellite galaxies and Stephan's nearby was quite nice...you could see that the foreground galaxy in the cluster was more distinct than the others. NGC 246 in Cetus was very nice & mottled. NGC 7332/39 in Pegasus displayed themselves well...two edge-ons in a tight dance. Congrats Bob (John & Lisa too) on such a great scope! Dave B.
Me and Rob, Rob and I, Rob and Me... arghhh! I went to Wolf Creek last night and so did Rob. There we found an absolutely beautiful sky. There was a herd of sheep about 100 yards from where I wanted to set up the telescope but a couple of quick blasts in the air from my 12 gauge turned them back. ;) Just kidding... There seemed to be twice as many stars in the Milky Way than usual. The wind blew like hell and the temperature was about 20 degrees before figuring in the wind chill. I kept telling Rob that the wind would subside after the Sun went down and the evening thermals cease. I really didn't want to be a meteorologist anyway. 11:30 PM the winds were really kicking. Wind chill by now had to be 5-10 degrees. Gotta love "go-to" scopes on nights like these. Punch in coordinates, press go-to and get back in the truck with the heater on high. Jump out long enough to have a look, press the button again and back in the truck where it's warm. I'm seriously considering trying Meade's new "Deep Space Imager". Last night sitting in the warmth of the truck while my telescope slewed perfectly from target to target while I stayed nice and toasty got me thinking how great modern technology has become. I think it would be cool, I mean neat, on nights like these, to simply run a cable out the back of the truck and kick back with a laptop and thermos of coffee. With the cold wind rocking the truck I couldn't help but wonder how long it will be before someone comes out with a scope that will tear down and pack itself up. I have to say that at one point it got so cold that I was tempted to drive off and just leave the damned thing there. Oh sure, I wondered about a lot of things, like, how long the external battery supply would last in that cold? Would it continue tracking, eventually pointing to China? If it fell over with no one around, would it make a sound? As I was ready to pull away, I noticed there below Capella, a familiar reddish/green flashing pulsar. Peering through the binoculars I soon discovered it to be the NGC object I had seen earlier over in Scorpio, Yup, NGC 747. ;) Oh yeah, on the way out there was no sign of the sheep but there was poop all over the place. I hope I didn't scare that out of them... Just kidding. Perhaps next time some of you who are bored out of your minds, or, out of work would like to join me. If so, give me a shout. Stargazing in the middle of the week is pretty cool... I mean, pretty neat. P.S. For all the Anti-technology folks out there who think Star Charts and Telrads rule, I do have a 12" Dob, but on nights like this, It would be futile trying to do anything. However, I would have felt a lot better about driving off and leaving the Dob behind. ;)
Oi, I needed that laugh! The best observing report I've read so far... Keep 'em coming ;o) -Rich --- diveboss@xmission.com wrote:
Me and Rob, Rob and I, Rob and Me... arghhh!
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participants (7)
-
Ann C. House -
David L Bennett -
diveboss＠xmission.com -
Joe Bauman -
John and Lisa Zeigler -
Josephine Grahn -
Richard Tenney