(IAAC) The wonders of the 2004 Texas Star Party

[shogsten at compuserve.com]

I'm still recovering from last week, I wish I had known that you were going 
to be there. I was setup with all of the imagers down on the north end of 
the middle field. It was definitely a damp year at TSP. I was so glad that 
I had been too lazy to remove my dew straps before I left Ohio. This was my 
sixth trip to TSP and I have never seen the humidity, bugs, and everything 
green.

Scott Hogsten

At 04:27 PM 5/25/2004, you wrote:
> >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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