A little report on our Workshop/Moon Watch get-together last night. I got to the park a little early and set up my binoculars on a Chuck Hards parallelogram. Daniel Turner came early also and we had a chance to talk over several interesting topics before things really got rolling. Daniel is a do-it-yourselfer and quite knowledgeable in astronomy. He is an avid galaxy hunter.
People starting showing up at 7:30 and Paul Witte and his young son Brandon came with their 10 Meade. We put the Meade to work on the moon and we could see Aristarchus and Herodotus really well out on the terminator. We could also see the lava tubes coming out of Herodotus very clearly in Pauls scope among many other moon features.
We had several walk-ins that enjoyed looking at things as well.
Before things got started a young gal (UVSC student) named Kammie (sp?), a fellow by the name of Dave Jenkins, another fellow who I am embarrassed to say I forgot his name, and a fellow named Don also were there. John and Lisa Zeigler came and with only about 9 or 10 people there we started your eyepiece workshop. John presented an interesting discussion on how eyepieces work.
I had the enjoyment of taking a few minutes and talking a little bit about the moon. Then we broke up and started looking at sky objects with the 5 or 6 scopes that were set up there. At that point there were so many little interesting side events/ discussions going on, it was just fun to roam around at try and get in on each one.
I was able to get with John Zeigler for a while and we did some eyepiece comparisons. John has some eyepieces that are very well made, light and inexpensive compared to some of the well-known brands. The eyepieces compared favorably with the Naglers and are go alternative for less than ½ the price. John will get the URL to the wegbsite for those who may be interested.
This was the first time I had met Dave Jenkins and he is an avid double start enthusiast. Dave and I got on my little Orion 8mmED and went to some doubles that Dave is familiar with. Surprisingly to both of us, with a 9mm University Optic eyepiece at 97x we were able to split the double star Castor (Alpha Gemini) which constituents are only about 2 arcseconds apart. We also took a look at Izar (Epsilon Bootes [pronounced Boe-OH-teez]) which is a 3 arcsecond split and whos constituents are yellow and bluish-green. We cranked the power up to 250x by using a 6mm University Optic and a 2.5 Powermate. Dave was able to fine tune the focus until we could see the diffraction rings and a airy disc. Double star splitting is still great on a moonlit night.
Daniel Turner found several deep sky objects including M3, which is a beautiful globular cluster. But, with the moon so bright it was hard to resoulve any of the individual stars.
I love Star Parties. I learn so much from the people there.
Jim Gibson
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