by Stacy Jo McDermott
It was great to see the folks from the Sacramento area. In attendence were Jake&Mercedes, Bill, Bill, Shneor, David, Albert, Stacy, Michelle, Paul, George and George's friend, whose name has slipped me right now (My apologies!)
Friday night: Since I arrived rather late due to traffic, I opted for some relaxation under the sky with just my eyes. The weather was quite balmy, the seeing very good and transparency just spectacular. It was nice to plop the sleeping bag down on the ground, get in and just gaze in wide wonder at the heavens with a soundtrack of people discussing their telescopes, what they were looking at and the crickets. If you've never tried this, I suggest that you do - it's like being at the spa where the day's cares just drift away. (however, alas no one to provide a pedicure LOL).
Saturday night: MESSIERS: Another wonderful night, albeit with cloudage around 2 AM. Using my 120mm refractor, Voyager, I bagged M5 in Serpens. This wonderful, tight, symetrical GC literally just popped into my eyepeice the nanosecond I hopped from epsilon serpens. Could it be that easy? Since I wanted to make sure, I did it again, checked the atlas for the star fields and identified it as such. I liked the view at 40x with my 25mm Parks eyepiece, but the view through the 15mm at 66x was nice as well. It got it's portrait drawn too.
DOUBLE STARS: I started on my double star list from the AL. Of course, since Mizor (Ursa Majoris Zeta) was on the list, I slew my telescope for a lovely view of this multiple star system. Really can't get tired of it. Ursa Minoris Alpha was next on my list and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could split it with the 15mm eyepiece. Very interesting double star - the companion is faint, but it's there. I'm wondering if Polaris can be used as a quick test on how good one's optics are in the vein of using Mizor and Alcor to test one's own eyesight. Has this been covered previously & I've just missed the info somewhere?
CONSTELLATIONS: Recently the AL added the Constellation Hunters Club to it's list of observing clubs. This intrigued me as I figured it was a good way to re-enforce my pattern identification of constellations. So sitting down with my logs, I started plotting the various different constellation patterns. Out of 38 on the list, I completed 18. Contrary to what you might think of doing such an exercise, it is not all that easy! It really challenged me to use my eyes differently, to sit and look closely at what is up there and to accurately plot the patterns.
Draco was the most challenging and one constellation that I've had issues with - why is it the way it is? It's not convienent, it's pretty wacky and it just meanders through the sky. Upon finishing up my plotting, I have a new found respect for Draco and look forward to poking through this constellation for other items on other observing lists.
While the Constellation Hunters Club is bundled with the beginning observing projects, I am under the impression that everyone at every level should do this because it's one thing to refer to star atlases & rely on our memory and quite another when we actually take the time to really "see" the constellation, particularly under dark sky conditions. How many of you have been blown away by how complex a constellation really is when you compare views from an urban/suburban area and a dark sky site? Personal experience has shown me that each constellation takes on a whole new level of complexity when viewed from a dark area.
Around 2 AM, clouds started to come in from the west, providing some sucker holes. The wind picked up a bit and about 15 minutes later, the sky was covered. While a little disappointing, it was a great night to top off a wonderful weekend.
Posted on tac-sac Jul 19, 2004 10:44:35 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 03, 2005 19:33:18 PT