(IAAC) The wonders of the 2004 Texas Star Party

Pierre Paquette starpete at arobas.net
Tue May 25 19:03:30 EDT 2004


Lew,

I see with pleasure that you had better skies at TSP than we did at
Québec's ROC - Rendez-vous des Observateurs du Ciel / Skygazer's
Rendezvous. ROC was held May 21-24, 2004 in Mansonville, PQ, close to
the US Border (Highwater, PQ / North Troy, VT).

Some 149 people attended, not counting those below 12 years of age. Two
conferences on Saturday May 22 (one about the Sun-Aurora connection; one
about a trip to Florida in August 2003 to observe Mars at its best) and
two more on Sunday May 23 (one about Ancient Astronomers; the other
about Atmospheric Light Phenomenon) entertained the audience, despite
the almost complete lack of clear skies.

We had a few hours of Sun-Moon-Venus-Jupiter observing on Friday and a
few of Sun-Moon-Venus observing on Sunday, all while the Sun was up or
barely set. One person found M51 with his telescope, but the clouds
rolled in as soon as they opened up! :(

The ROC was the third event of its kind. Next year it should be slated
for the early May or early June new moon. People are welcome from
everywhere: we even had a visitor from Germany and one from France! The
talks are given in French, though.

Clear skies!
 
Pierre Paquette
http://www.starpete.tk
Groupe d'astronomes amateurs Polaris
http://www.astropolaris.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: netastrocatalog-announce-bounces at visualdeepsky.org
[mailto:netastrocatalog-announce-bounces at visualdeepsky.org] On Behalf Of
Lewis J. Gramer
Sent: 25 mai 2004 16:28
To: dedalus at alum.mit.edu
Subject: (IAAC) The wonders of the 2004 Texas Star Party

>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



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