Another GSSP OR

by Greg LaFlamme

Oh man, I still have visions of sugar-plums when I close my eyes:-) It was spectacular! The hearty breakfast (thanks again Dan!) the shady campground and fun group of folks at our campsite made the trip great but the sky's made the trip. Day time temps were in the low to mid 70's and the low to mid 40's at night. What a beautifully organized and well executed event and thanks so much to the organizers for the job they did! Jane Smith put in place a rule to control the "leaving the lot without warning fellow observers before turning on their headlights issue" and it worked very well. I was at Bumpass Hell all three nights:-) I've used Finnish triangles in many different sky's on many different nights but never before have I counted 32 stars in Uma! Folks, that in the Mag 7.4 realm! A neat guy named Bill Faatz had his giant Fujinion 25x150 binoculars set up right next to me so we were swapping views most of Friday night and M24 was amazing in them. He also had a SQ meter that read 21.99!! That's like Australia from what I hear. We had a great group of people and everyone was as friendly and helpful as people could be. Steve Gottlieb's talk was fun, informative and cleared up quite a few mysteries. I was counting the HII rejoins in M31,33 and a few others in no time at all.

Clearly I need more experience and eye-time hanging out with the power observers because I got all lost and confused like a sissy-girl in the Hercules cluster... Darnit! Albert sure makes it look easy but I was having a heck of a time matching Urano-Metria with the 12 or so galaxies in my 270x .30 degree f.o.v. :-( Oh well, the entire region was a mind blower just the same. I unlocked the drives and circled around inside of it and I was going deeeeep in my 15" way-back machine. Later, I plopped a 26 Nagler into my Orion ST120 and combed the Milky-way with a 23x 3.25 degree f.o.v. and after this trip, that combo has earned a spot on my "never sell it list". I also got to spend a bunch of time with one of the finest 25" Starmasters I have ever looked through, M22 in his 31 Nag was an epiphany for me as well as M51 at 450x! Good golly miss Molly! Thanks for the show John, it was well worth my over use of exclamation points! I wish you were a taco:-) The great Bill Cone showed me a planetary in his 18" Plettstone and it had a orangey-red outline, Whoa,,,,ngc7331 in Robb Enns new 16" Plettstone was a stunner as well, all five in Stephan's no problem, 4 in the dear-lick, no sweat...Dan Kaeo was knocking off 15th mag galaxies in his 10" f4.5! My pal Mike Delaney and I viewed the Veil and Crescent in every way possible, deep and wide. Altitude is everything. I was mostly hanging out with Mike Delany, Robb Enns, Dan Kaeo, the Pauls (LeFevre and Sterngold) Kevin Roberts, Pete Santangeli, Andy Mauffet-Smith, Sarah E and had a great time with all of them and many others as well..Marek even stopped by to visit awhile:-) What a fun group. I made a bunch of new friends, had a great time with my usual observing group, missed my friends who did not or could not attend (Dennis Steele, Lance Boehm and Carl Ching) and got to put allot of faces with the names of fellow tacos who's listings I've read on Tac. I eagerly await next years event and am looking forward to Cal Star. Better put your shoes in the van now Jamie:-)

Greg LaFlamme

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