Well I guess it's time for another writeup.
I arrived at Lostock on Thursday morning, with sunny skies but very windy and very gusty. The marquee guys arrived shortly after to erect the marquee, and with those wind gusts they certainly had to work hard!
But they did a fantastic job and the marquee gave excellent protection from the wind and sun and didn't move all weekend.
Most people started arriving on Thursday, and after a very windy day, the wind died down and gave us a few hours of clear skies on Thursday night before clouds came over at about 10:30pm. I had equipment issues for the first time at a star party, with my guiding in DEC just not working.
Friday started out beautiful and sunny again, but very windy and some very strong gusts. One of the gusts blew the hutch off my table, which contained the laptop and all the cords. Nothing appeared to be damaged, with the exception of my long-exposure serial box which had its box smashed apart but the electronics were still intact.
Andrew Murrell and John Bambury gave the first talk of the weekend, describing some of the objects that can be seen in the October Lostock skies. That was followed by Lesa Moore, who gave an account of her experiences travelling to Mauna Kea, which was very entertaining and enlightening.
Some clouds came over and we even got 5-10 minutes of rain on Friday afternoon, and I thought we didn't have a chance of getting any observing on Friday night, but it cleared away beautifully and Friday night was just magic.
Clear ALL night long, a slight breeze keeping the dew away, and 2 magic fireballs that sparked and broke up as they glowed through the sky.
My equipment problems continued to haunt me, as even though I figured out my guiding problems (by changing some settings in PHD), my DSLR (which was being controlled by the laptop) kept disconnecting and reconnecting from the laptop.
Turned out that my 4-port USB hub didn't survive the fall, and was causing the problems with the camera.
So even with the clear skies all night long, I didn't get any prime focus photography done and headed to bed about 3:30am.
Saturday was a beautiful day - virtually no wind now, sunny and very warm. I went up to the top of the nearby hill to log on, and drove past Mount Disappointment where we had the spectacular views of Comet McNaught in 2007. It certainly brought back some memories!
Later on Saturday, Greg Bradley gave a talk about the basics of great astrophotography, and was followed by Prof Geraint Lewis who gave a very interesting talk about the anthropic principals in astronomy. Some of the cosmology stuff went over my head, but the history aspect was very interesting to me.
The Lucky Door Prize went off without a hitch, and the new format seemed to work well. It was certainly over and done with nice and quickly.
Lyn Petrie (Rick Petrie's wife) won the Peppers Gift Voucher, Dean Yates (Deeno) won the Binoculars, and Mikael (the exchange student from Finland) won the 50% Argo Navis discount.
Saturday night started out beautifully again, and I was hoping we'd get another all-night clear night, but it started clouding over again at about 11pm. I think a few people were sort of relieved, happy to hit the sack to get some extra sleep after Friday night!
Some light rain on Sunday morning sped up the packing up process for a few people, and most had left by around 9-10am. I managed to get out of there by about 11:30am and spent the rest of the day unpacking!
So all in all the weather was really good - it would've been nice to have been clear ALL night long 3 nights in a row, but what we got was a bonus. For the visual observers it was perfect, with a few hours every evening - especially for the sky tours and casual stargazers who got their fix and were then able to go to bed.
For the imagers, we would've liked a few more hours but that's always going to be the case
Some thankyou's!
Firstly to the volunteers - the guys that help out on-site are just fantastic and I couldn't have done it without you. Especially Chris Poynter (chrisp9au) - his first IISAC but he was a machine! He pitched in and helped out in almost every way - manning the rego desk, cleaning, stacking chairs and tables, picking up rubbish. Thanks very much Chris, your help was greatly appreciated.
Thanks to Fred (bassnut) for the P.A setup again this year. He does such a professional job, and the added bonus of the additional speaker pointing down to the camping area was fantastic. A lot of people commented how clear it was, and it was great to be able to announce the programme, dinner etc to people down on the field. Thanks again Fred, much appreciated.
Thanks to the Gresford RFB for the catered dinners again this year. The food was just fantastic - 3 courses every night and I don't think anyone walked away hungry. They bring it all in, serve it all up, wash it all up and take it all away. I couldn't ask for anything more!
Thanks to the Guest Speakers for sharing their time and expertise and talking to the group.
Thanks to the Chris Bond (CB) for recording the talks. They'll be made available for download or youtube in the next week or so.
Thanks to Andrew (RB) for being the official photographer, taking pictures of the guest speakers and the group photo.
Thanks to Cathi for picking up the projector/screen on Thursday, Thanks to Alan Meehan for the shirts, and thanks to the sponsors (York Optical and Wildcard Innovations) for the prizes for the lucky door prize competition.
It was great to have my family there this year. Jacob came up with me on Thursday, and Kate and the girls came up on Friday. They all went home on Saturday morning, but it was nice to have them there and spend some time with them.
It was also great to catch up some old friends, make some new ones, and put more faces to the names of the people we know online.
It's always a lot of work putting IISAC together, but I'm getting better at it and this year was the best in terms of organisation and being able to relax during the event.
Some changes this year such as the witches hats down on the camping field, helpers for the rego desk, the black draping in the marquee and the better projector/screen, were all improvements that had a positive impact.
I want IISAC to be the no-fuss star party, where people can come and relax and have a good time in each others company. I want it to be the family friendly, relaxed environment and I think that now the balance is just about right.
The friendly nature at IISAC is an extension of the excellent culture we have here on IceInSpace. It's a testament to the great group of people we've assembled in this fantastic IceInSpace community.
I'd love to hear your feedback. If you haven't yet done so, it'd be great if you could fill in the
Feedback Form and let me know what you liked and didn't like, and/or any changes you'd like to see.
IISAC2010 will be held on the 7th-10th October, 2010. So same time of year - last weekend of the NSW school holidays, and another week earlier so it may be a bit cooler at night.
Attached is a low-res version of the Saturday afternoon Group Shot. You can download a medium res version (1.2meg) here:
IISAC2009 Group Shot (1.2meg)
More pics will come in the next days or weeks, and I'd love to see some more writeups and pics from others!