Calstar 2004

by Bob Jardine

Observing Report, Calstar, 2004 October 13-15

First of all, big thanks to Mark, Rob, and Mike for organizing this event. I am truly grateful.

Now for just the Highlights:

  1. Observing with my new scope; Albert Highe's former Mark III prototype, a 17.5" f/4.5 beauty. (No, this scope wasn't the cause of the rain, cause it's not really new. Must have been Turley's new scope.)

  2. Sharing a cabin for the third straight year with Albert, David Kingsley, and Peter McKone. Always enjoyable company.

  3. Seeing so many friends from near and far. (But sorry to have missed so many others!)

  4. A great new "forgotten observing gear" story for TACO lore: Tips drove all the way from Saratoga to Soledad, realized he had left something behind, and drove back to get it! That tops Rashad's extra round-trip drive between SF and Fremont Peak, returning for his forgotten parts. Oh, well, I guess that still isn't as far as the drive from San Diego.

  5. Stumbling across a geosynchronous flasher. Very strange. I had positioned the scope via the finder on some object in Aquarius, then went to the eyepiece. To my surprise, right in the middle of the field of view was this slowly flashing object. It stayed in the field of view for over 1/2 hour, then I got bored with it and went on to find the original target object, now in quite a different location! The flashing object blinked on and off about once per second, but it also had a longer cycle -- every 5 to 10 seconds it would quit flashing for a few seconds, and then start up again. I guess it was rotating and precessing in complex way.

  6. IC 10. Large, dim, low surface-brightness local group dwarf.

  7. NGCs 1 and 2.

  8. NGC 6946 with SN 2004et.

  9. NGC 206 -- the star cloud/nebula in M31.

  10. My best view ever of the Perseus cluster. With a personalized guided tour by Albert!

  11. An incredibly detailed view of M42 and M43. Really awesome detail and contrast.

  12. Starting the Herschel-2 project with about 18 good observations with detailed notes.

  13. A self pat on the back for going down a day early, Wednesday, which turned out to allow three nights of observing. As you all know by now, Calstar was rained out on Saturday night.

Even rain-shortened, my Calstar was awesome. Do we really have to wait until next year for another?

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 18, 2004 21:42:50 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 15, 2005 18:09:35 PT