by Jamie Dillon
Observing report to follow. CalStar was just pure fun. Liam and I had the biggest time. It was wonderful to have quality time with folks not seen often enough, like Nilesh and Paul and their families, Jeff G, and Stacy Jo whose path I hadn't crossed in too long. Quality time with regular buddies as well. Top of the line humans.
But there were also some big doings. Randy Muller finished the Hicksons, a project he's been doing over two years. And Albert Highe did some unparalleled work in the Perseus Cluster, Abell 426, finding 100 objects in the same 3 degree radius, in the same huge cluster. Dude, I spent hours in that field last winter and came up with 7, with two possibles sitting waiting. There is more than aperture at play here.
A subtext here: both ZZ and Albert in their respective projects have lapped the Astro Animal. Gottlieb hissef, who with The Weasel is eminent among us, has done roughly half of each of these sets. No kidding, these guys are going some. Hearty congratulations both to two fine observers and to the titans who provide such benchmarks to surpass, once in a while.
Oh yeah, and Liam Dillon did his first starhop. Said he wanted to find a Messier object. I stood back, pointed out a trapezoidal shape of stars, told him to put the Telrad one third in along one leg, and bingo he looked in the eyepiece and said, "The big bright thing?" Single prompts. Now he has one set of impressions to write in his new log. "Fireworks" was his key word.
I'm hitting the sack. Allabest, gang.