[Chaos-l] Anybody going out tonight (Fri Oct 29)?

[Tony Rice]

That was me  in the darkness with Matthew in tow.  He was very excited
to see Uranus (I've not been able to show him beyond Saturn) and
enjoyed seeing all the Messier objects that Dr. Plesser and you were
kind enough to help out with.  Would have been nice to have more
visitors but Matthew and I really enjoyed the time we spent there.

-Tony

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Jon Stewart-Taylor
<joncst at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hi all.  Yesterday i wrote:
>
>> [...] Duke Teaching Observatory off Cornwallis Road is having an open
>> house tonight.
>
> I went, and it was nice, although a bit underpopulated.  When i arrived
> around 7:30,  Dr. Plesser had out a pair of 10" SCTs, and we used them to
> look at some of the tourist traps (i didn't bring the 10", figuring i'd
> sponge off Duke's equipment.  I did bring a pair of 10x50s, though).  About
> 8:00 a CHAOS member and his 5th-grade offspring showed up (Tony, was that
> you?). As with any site that close, it wasn't terribly dark, but the Milky
> Way was present from Sagittarius all the way around to Perseus.  We looked
> at more tourist traps, and Jupiter of course.  All four moons were nicely
> arranged almost equally spaced, all on the same side of the planet.  After
> the kid turned into a pumpkin and they left, we found M17, but it was Very
> Dim.  Switching to a brighter object, it was Still Very Dim.
>
> Dr. Plesser diagnosed dew on the collector plate, and declared the
> telescopes useless for the night. A brief discussion about home-brew dew
> preventers followed.  Dr. Plesser was very excited about this idea.
>  Apparently, Physics Departments have tons of resistors and such just laying
> around waiting to be assembled into Projects by Downtrodden Undergrads at
> the direction of Sadistic Professors.  At the next open house on November
> 11th, dew may not be an issue.
>
> About 10 minutes after the dew diagnosis, another couple of people showed
> up.  The scopes were still dewed over, but we were able to do the green
> laser pointer tour of the summer constellations, the Perseus/Andromeda
> group, and the available Zoodiac constellations.  Using the laser pointer in
> combination with the binoculars, we showed them the Pleiades and M31.
>
> Dr.  Plesser was also pleased to hear that we had restored and were getting
> service from the 8" Criterions we got from Duke.  Jamie, think we could drop
> by one of the Open House sessions in November or December and let him see
> how they turned out?
>
> J.
> --
> Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
> Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos
>
>
>
>
>
>
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