Public Star Party 12/4/2016

I went out to our club’s really dark site last night, about 1 hr 15 mins from my house in Lincolnville, also known as Galaxy Quest. Weather finally cooperated for a public star party event: temps were cool around 20F, only a slight breeze occasionally, no clouds, and the atmosphere seemed dry to me. Granted the Moon didn’t set until almost 10pm, it was still pretty dark using the observatory as a light shield. The property is owned by the son of a club member. The father built a large roll off observatory years ago when he was a lot more interested in astronomy. His interest has since wained quite a bit, so he loans the observatory to a friend who teaches highschool science at a private school nearby. The observatory has a nice 12″ planewave looking telescope (sorry forgot the exact brand) setup for astrophotography. We played around a bit with it as I was interested at what things look like. We snapped some photos of M42, M1 and NGC891, learning the process, pros and cons. It was an interesting setup. I wish I had that kind of money to plop down on gear. The owner also had an 18″ F4.5 Nightsky dob. We looked at several objects with it. To be honest, it needed some work. Mirror was pretty dirty and had some iffy eyepieces in it. I thought views through my scope were a lot better.

I had my scope setup on M57, M1, and M42. I haven’t looked at M1 since October-ish 2015. I remembered exactly where it was and found it easily with 26mm eyepiece & O-III filter. I bumped up the magnification to 14mm eyepiece and while it was very faint, I think I could see some structure in the nebula using averted vision. I got some oohs and aahs from M42 in my scope. The trapezium was dead sharp. I think two people from the public had never been to a starparty before and enjoyed themselves, asking a ton of questions.