Coe Star Party

Richard Navarrete

We had a nice group of astronomers at Coe last night with a great variety of scopes. 4" refractors, dob's from 10 - 20 inches. Nice 11" SCT's with bino-viewers, astrophotographers, newbies, pretty much the whole gamut.

Observing conditions had temps on the cool side, but comfortable with a few layers, clear skies, but poor transparency. I figured with my 18" scope I was seeing what an 8" scope would see in good conditions. Still, it was a fun time and a good group of men and woman. I knocked about 13 Virgo galaxies off of my H2500 list. The only memorable view was of the 'Siamese Twins" NGC's 4567/4568. These pair are large and bright and appear to overlap each other. 4564 is also in the eyepiece field and is a large bright elongated galaxy.

Here's a nice shot of the pair 4567/4568 from the Subaru Telescope.

http://www.nao.ac.jp/Subaru/hdtv/ngc4567s.jpg

I can't believe I hadn't observed this gem before. Check it out!

I also took a few star party photos before sunset and have posted them to the TAC Flickr page.

http://flickr.com/groups/tac/

If you have a Flickr account, please post your star party photos there. You have to be a member to post, but it's as easy as getting a Yahoo account as Yahoo owns Flickr. Anyone is free to look at the pictures.

I hope others enjoyed their time out under the stars last night.

Richard