Saturday Dight Driveway Astronomy

by Jane Houston

I kept my observing sessions close to home this weekend. Saturday night, October 2nd, a few astronomer friends came up to Marin to have a night of Pizza and Photons at Chez Houston.

I must report that the pizza trio, Basil and tomato, a combo of mixed good things, and a pepperoni, no anything, dissappeared quickly. Good thing, because the whole mess was washed down soon afterwards with banana splits, gooey with peanut butter, hot fudge and toasted pecans. Fat Free cool whip on top lent an air of diet respectability to the meal.

While we waited for Jupiter, we played with my new foucoult tester, checking progress on some mirrors I am attempting to finish eventually. My mirror testing setup consists of Bill Arnett's borrowed mirror holder, plopped on the Spring and Summer volume of the Night Sky Observer's Guide on one table and 84 inches away, the funky foucoult tester I got at RTMC in May. We locked ourselves in the "testing room", aka office, and aligned the tester/holder, and held Orion plastic ronchi screens against the knife edge to read the mirrors. Soon a knock on the door yielded those yummy banana splits, and we felt obligated to join the others upstairs. The mirrors looked good tho', but I have more work to do on them.

We were having such fun indoors, what with the ice cream, and mirrors, and singing Christine Lavin's "Planet X", that it was hard to tear ourselves away and go outdoors. There's astro stuff nearly everywhere, walls, floors, garage. So it's not like there was no astronomy going on. We set up Stardust, my homemade 10 inch F 7.3 reflector, the small 6 inch Red Dwarf, and a new (previously owned) C-5 on the back deck. Soon we were moving the two smaller telescopes out front on the driveway for a quicker look at Jupiter. Jupiter was just peeking over the trees.

I invited the neighbors, all 4 visiting brothers and elderly papa, cigars in ..hand ..over to take a look at Jupiter. They were having a family reunion. We were having a family visit too, our celestial family of planets were being visited through the telescopes. Brothers and wives and father all stepped to the eyepieces and emitted the familiar "wow" that we all love to hear. I moved the 6 incher up the street and all traipsed over for a look at Saturn and Titan, their first look at the lovely ringed planet and its large moon. The views were great, despite some street lights. We all felt great, sharing our solar system neighbors with some neighbors who had never seen them before.

Before we knew it it was midnight, and time to take the scopes in, clean up the pizza remains, and reflect upon how nice it is to observe with good friends and close neighbors, and not to have to drive home for a change!