Here's the report that Craig have to the astronomy club on our star party from this weekend.
We had a local home school group at our house in Cumby last night for some observing.
I used my 12" Meade LX90 and 16" F4 homemade dob and my usual eyepieces which are mostly wide angle Meades.
The weather wasn't too bad, but there were some high thin clouds in the west making the Dallas light dome much more obvious and washing out some deep sky objects. Spring is a bit challenging for outreach anyway since a lot of people find the sight of a galaxy rather underwhelming. Seeing was on the poor side, but there were some brief periods where it approached good. I had hoped to give them a glimpse of M42 but the clouds to the west kept it obscured.
We started with some white light solar observing. But only one family made it in time to see a couple of small sunspots before the sun went behind the trees.
So we went inside for some refreshments and a mirror making. I had everyone try their hand at grinding on a 6" blank and talked about the mirror making process.
After dark we went out and observed Jupiter, Mars, a few Messier galaxies that weren't too bad (or too good given the conditions), M44, and finished with M3.
I had to keep the magnification down on Jupiter but actually got really good views on Mars with the 16". We talked about the Jovian moons and Galileo. M44 and M3 were the deep sky favorites.
We shut down about 10 PM.
I used my 12" Meade LX90 and 16" F4 homemade dob and my usual eyepieces which are mostly wide angle Meades.
The weather wasn't too bad, but there were some high thin clouds in the west making the Dallas light dome much more obvious and washing out some deep sky objects. Spring is a bit challenging for outreach anyway since a lot of people find the sight of a galaxy rather underwhelming. Seeing was on the poor side, but there were some brief periods where it approached good. I had hoped to give them a glimpse of M42 but the clouds to the west kept it obscured.
We started with some white light solar observing. But only one family made it in time to see a couple of small sunspots before the sun went behind the trees.
So we went inside for some refreshments and a mirror making. I had everyone try their hand at grinding on a 6" blank and talked about the mirror making process.
After dark we went out and observed Jupiter, Mars, a few Messier galaxies that weren't too bad (or too good given the conditions), M44, and finished with M3.
I had to keep the magnification down on Jupiter but actually got really good views on Mars with the 16". We talked about the Jovian moons and Galileo. M44 and M3 were the deep sky favorites.
We shut down about 10 PM.
Meade 12" LX90-ACF
16" F4 Homebuilt Dob
16" F4 Homebuilt Dob
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