Calstar 2004

by Brian Zehring


Count me in! I may even rent space in our "cabin-on-wheels". We won't even have to worry about running the generator (you only need it for A/C)........

We had a great time by the way, although I didn't get around to seeing many people that I had met from the South or Tac from other years. The funny part was pulling up to the Tac-Sac area behind Alvin's car at dusk in the RV and having someone runover (Rob?) to let us know we could not turn on lights inside or run the generator and suggest that we park in another area. My wife was offended by the welcoming committee but I explained to her what the concern was all about. I also told her there was no rule against honking the air horn, so we did that. Little did anyone else know that we had set the bedroom up to be used at night with no light leakage. She was in there with lights on watching tv until 1:00 am or so, it was pitch black from the outside. The only mistake I made was that I didn't realize how hot it was going to be during the day, so she needed to turn the generator on for about 45 minutes to get some A/C on the kids around 3:00. I was at work in Salinas at the time, otherwise we would have moved to another area. I have my own opinion about such stringent noise restriction after about 2:00 pm, but I guess it is up to the group to set the standard. No big deal.

Cool stuff we saw:

Supernova in NGC6946. Beautiful galaxy in its own right. 6 Abell planetaries I've been looking for (and some nearby faint galaxies and planetaries) Ngc 392 galaxy cluster-I'm still not sure how many I saw Globular in Ngc147- finally a succesful observation of a david kingsley inspired object! G132 will also be conquered one day!


Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 19, 2004 23:09:19 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 15, 2005 18:14:51 PT