last night MAS (my astro soc) had a private viewing night at the oaks. while not totally dark it is 100% better than my backyard.
This was my first one of these and for some reason I must have been a little nervous or something cause I forgot my palm pilot with its starcharts/planetarium software and most importantly i forgot something to sit on
. Boy did my back ache this morning....
anyhow there was a vast array of scopes there from dobs to some of the longest refractors i have ever seen to... well you name it. it was good to just walk around to see what ppl were doing... one guy was attempting some pics, another spent the whole night splitting doubles and there were ppl showing newbies around the sky. There was whinging and complaining whenever car lights went on when ppl left.
I got some pointers on finding m1 which i have never seen before, some galaxies in fornax and leo which i didnt find but will try agian when i can be more comfortable, and some open clusters that I had already seen... very helpful ppl.
I spent most of the time looking at onld friends like the lmc and smc, 47tuc, omega cent, various open clusters, the sculptor galaxy, saturn, jupiter, etc and marveling at the diference in contrast a decent site makes. that said tho there was an awful amount of moisture in the air and high power seeing was pretty bad.
over all a good nights viewing was had
thier next night is next saturday... Think I might go to this one too
(with my chair and palmpilot)
hopefully the seeing and transparence will both be good
viewing night
