by Jane Houston Jones
The San Francisco Amateur Astronomer held their first Mount Tam Star party of the year last night. The SFAA has been holding star parties at the Rock Springs Parking lot on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County since the 1960's.
It was a remarkable night because of the poor sky. It was windy. The transparancy was bad, with alot of high clouds. And the seeing was even worse. But despite the poor conditions, there were 32 telescopes set up by members of the club last night. The telescopes ranged from 20 inch reflectors on down to 4.5 inchers. The most unique was Andrew Bell's homemade 16 inch reflector. He has painted the tube with the night sky, including constellations, Milky Way and every Messier object. There were many sizes and makes of refractors, and lots of SCTs and even some nice big mounted binos.
About 200 people attended the lecture in the Mountain Theatre before the star party, and then they came down and looked through all the telescopes. There were about 50 other people who skipped the lecture and just started looking through the telescopes with us as soon as the planets were visible.
This is a public star party where astronomy enthusiasts can attend without bringing telescopes. We welcome people who can hang out, look through our telescopes and ask as many questons as they want. Mojo and I had a 17.5 inch Litebox reflector and our AP180EDT refractor set up, and next to us on each side were 8 and 11 inch SCTs, for a good telescope primer for our guests.
For the schedule of Mount Tamalpais star parties, held once a month on the new moon Saturday night from April through October, here is the website:
http://www.sfaa-astronomy.org/sfaa/starparties/index.shtml
For a list of other public star parties in the bay area in April, go here. I post a list of bay area indoor and outdoor astronomy events on this list each month, and you are welcome to join the list if you are interested in this type of announcement, or you can use check out the archives from time to time.
http://www.sfsidewalkastronomers.org/pipermail/sfevents/2002-March/000113.html
For bay area Astronomy Day activities on April 20, go here:
http://www.sfsidewalkastronomers.org/pipermail/sfevents/2002-April/000115.html