Small Ap OR

by Carol Widger

I got the basics of the 110mm Jaegers finished Wednesday at noon, but after much huffing and repacking, decided it would just not fit in our little 89 Ford escort with all the camping gear. So, the astronomess shows up among all the huge ap Casses and truss dobs with a little 50mm eq Micronta refractor.

7/11 the first night, we arrived at dusk to camp and crept into the edge of the parking lot with the scope and chairs after everyone else had started viewing. Don needed a good night's sleep, and I was under the impression that starparties went all night long till dawn. So I told him to come to just come pick me up in the morning...thanks William (?) for the 330 am ride back to camp. Most of that night, the huge scape of spangles had me lost. I could pick out Scorpius and Sagitarius in front of me, but the the rest was a little overwhelming. After an hour at the scope checking out the sights and tweaking it a little, I just sat down and gawked at the bowl of heaven for almost the rest of the night. One neighbor offered me a view in a huge truss reflector that he had built himself, but mostly I viewed alone.

The second and third nights, we came earlier , met some families, and others who came over to talk... many said they had started out on one of those little 60mm scopes, and were stunned when I told them it was a 50mm. while others were waiting for their big scopes to cool down in the depening dusk, I got in some nice view of Jupiter , with bands and on with the 6mm otrho on Thusday night, could see the GRS, for the first time. I perused the star clusters in Scorpius and the Teapot, a few voices in the dark kindly showed me more to look at Sean from Santa Rosa and a couple of others. The last night was the best, a smattering of "eye-candy "views in the neighbors bigger scopes, a few galaxies with radial arms, and larger but way softer views of Jupiter. Paul Alsing, a veteran observer with a very nice scope helped me center my way with the keystone stars as the sky deepend. Then he centered down on the Scopion, and told tales and myths and star names mixed in with sights not to miss in the region.

Bob Jardine came over and asked to take a look. I apologised for the dinky and useless finder, resolving then and there to replace it when I got home. He sighted along the tube, and pinned the lagoon nebula to show me , very surprised that it showed nebulosity in that small of a scope. I stayed on that little gem for a good half an hour. I've got everything viewed written in my notebooks under the camping stuff. The rest of the evening, I spent sketching constellations in the far southern horizon, and also the northern circumpolar stars. A fun project was disentangling the scoliotic Draco, whom I'd never seen from Novato A beautiful sky, and good company, even if no one really knew me, they were more than willing to help out a beginner. Thank you to all those voices and faces I cannot still pin names on.. I promise to remember better next year! I am heartily glad that I didn't bring that bigger scope. Would have spent the entire trip tweaking and fixing it instead of relaxing and observing. Even Don, my favorite non-astronomer, got to relax. And he got 80 more pages written on his lastest story.

Exhausted and happy

Carol

I'll post a fuller version of the OR later on at http://astronomyblogs.com/member/tree_house_observatory/