[Chaos-l] Observing sessions: 1 week ago, 2 days ago, 1 day ago

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

1 week ago: We had our best turnout ever at the Currin's 7 peope with 5 
telescopes and a pair of binoculars.  Observing conditions were as good 
as the skyclock promised, and we got very good views of the late winter 
and early spring objects.  The highlight was certainly Greg Dillon with 
his 26" reflector showing us views of the Eskimo (planetary nebula in 
Gemini) and several of the Ursa Major galaxies.  He even tracked down a 
galaxy with a supernova in it.  If you thought about going that night 
and didn't, you should officially regret your decision.  Mark, Mark, 
Peter, Greg: anybody else want to write a paragraph?

On Friday i went with my youngest daughter to the Duke forest session: 
her middle-school science teacher was doing an astronomy unit, and 
recommended either the Duke Forest or Morehead sessions, so i thought 
we'd go and see what they're like.  When we arrived at 7:00 (about 1/2 
hour after the official start)  Dr. Plessar had two Meades in 
operation, and a crowd of a little over a dozen people.  He was showing 
mostly the moon and Saturn at first.  It was a pretty good night 
apparently: Saturn was showing 5 moons, and the Cassini division was 
barely visible.  Then we made a quick visit to the asteroid Vesta and a 
longer one to the Orion Nebula.  Later on he asked for advice on what 
to show people: very convenient, considering my recent articles for the 
newsletter.   We left around 8:30 when America started getting cold.  
Not a bad quick session, and if it wasn't terribly dark it was at least 
better than our yard.  Dr. Plessar seemed very glad to have a CHAOS 
member there.  A reasonable possibility for getting your public service 
time in, and for a quick photon fix if the weather hasn't been 
cooperating for sessions at darker sites.

Saturday i went to the Morehead session advertised by Joshua.  It was 
much better populated than last month's session, presumably because of 
the much better weather.  The seeing seemed unusually good for 
Ebenezer, and people queued up for Saturn for almost all the first 
hour.  Later we visited the Tourist Traps.  I handed out all of my 
CHAOS propaganda cards, and people seemed particularly interested in 
the "What did i see" page.  There were also quite a few people asking 
beginner questions: how to get started, how to learn constellations, 
what telescope should they get, how to make the sub-standard telescope 
the got as a gift usable, and so on.  A very nice public session.  
Thanks for hosting, Joshua.

J.
-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor	joncst at earthlink.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/
CHAOS webmaster: chaos at rtpnet.org