(meteorobs) The wonders of the 2004 Texas Star Party

[Lewis J. Gramer]

>To: IAAC Chat <netastrocatalog-announce at visualdeepsky.org>;
>     meteorobs at meteorobs.org; starrynights at yahoogroups.com;
>     amastro at yahoogroups.com

I just pulled in at 2am last night, from an 11-day driving and observing
Odyssey to the Texas Star Party in Ft. Davis, West Texas USA... We had
been hauling a 36" f/5 dob co-owned by several of us, together with
several smaller dobs and equipment. It was an incredible event, and I
have MOUNDS of deep-sky observations to try to enter into the IAAC - as
well as (yes, folks) a ONE-HOUR meteor observing session last Monday
night... (Talk about Deep Sky Guilt!)

With our own 36", we observed 6 Abell galaxy clusters, 5 Hickson galaxy
groups, 4 Arp galaxies, 3 Shakhbazian galaxy chains, several Terzan and
Tonantzintla globular clusters, 3 planetary nebulae in M7, and that
planetary in M22 (plus tons of NGC and Messier objects beyond
description - some of my co-owners love the bright stuff!). With our
other scopes, we also saw the ejecta field of lunar crater Aristarchus
illuminated by EARTHSHINE, and the ion  tail, hoods and inner coma of
one very fine comet! With the OTHER two 36" f/5 scopes at TSP, we
(purportedly!) observed a particularly thorny item from the "aint no"
list, among some other very fine sights...

With the unaided eye, I got nice impressions of Comet NEAT, the Zodiacal
Light (like a New York City skyglow), Gegenschein, Zodiacal Band, the
Ophiuchus arm of the Milky Way, 17 Messier objects - and about 22
meteors in 1 hour of Teff with LM=7.3. (This latter was during a couple
of hours of poor transparency one night.)

I hope others will keep prompting and encouraging me to get all these
observations entered into IAAC and meteorobs properly - I am awfully
tired from the 5000 mile round-trip, but I would love to share these
wonders with you all soon!

PS: A special thank you to Barbara Wilson for being such a welcoming
presence, and for her inspiration to us all to observe more and deeper!

Clear skies all!
Lew Gramer