Report on the ND starparty

[Starforce2]

First off, we had several speakers there, Including Vishnu Reddy from spacewatch india, A aldy there for the comet Temple collision, I forget her name atm, Cassini probe and Mars rovers, and another guy there who goes around india to schools so children can experience astronomy.

As for actual oberving, only one night, Saturnday night, was good. It was warm and dew free. Thurday night before it official began was good, but friday was extremly hazy and while most stars and the milkyway could be see it was foggy and the dew made things impossible. There were telescopes ranging from a 4 or 5 inch used by a kid to an 11.25" nextstar type and an 18" truss dob. On the last nigth I had fun showing this little boy, who seems to know a little about what he was doing, which was pretty good for a kid going into 4th grade, several galaxy's and globular clusers. Unfortuneatly had didn't seem to understand what to look for and missed out on the viel nebula.

I viewed with my own scope M13, M15, M68, and finally managed to find pesky M4. I believe I also hit M53. The first night I stayed up late enough to grab the Lagoon, Trifid, Swan and a spectacular looking m24 Starcloud which looked very impressive. I also viewed much darknebula while hunting for the North America nebula, which I was unable to notice, however with this neew scope I may need something wider than a 32mm to see it. I believe I saw the dark part which is the "gulf of mexico" section, atleast.
The dumbell, Ring, and owl Nebula were also impressive, and ofcourse there was a galaxy in that field, M108. From there I moved to M109, and then M51, which was very impessive. It appeared as vibrant and easily noticeable as the Orion nebula, supported high power (I think I stuck a 15mm on it) and both cores were visably connected along with spiral dust lanes visable and some small detail as well in the arms. I also went staropping in Leo, Noting 2 I had done before, M66 and 65. Saturday I attempted to find more, hitting the trio of M96, 95 and 105 after a few minutes of searching. Not sure which 2 of the 3 I found, but i noticed 2 fuzzy core very close to one another so ti was likely I found 96 and 95. I made an attempt for some Coma galaxyes, such as ngc 4565 bbut came up empty, though the Mel111 starcluser was not a bad view, and I came away with m53 I believe at that time as well, giving that little kid something to look at. Perhaps one of the most impressive object I found was while doing the sombrero and m68. I took a bit of time, about 10-15 minutes, to scan for NGC 4361, a tiny planetary nebula about 1/3 visually in size compared to the ring. I did find it, and got to show several other folks the tiny object. I also managed to locate Temple 9P afterward, but unfortunealty the next day, Friday, was a dew washout so I was unable to show the scientist who had given the talk on the comet her project. Even Vishu's go-to couldn't pull it in.

Perhaps most impressive of all, and the one object that drew the biggest ammount of people to my eyepeice was the Viel nebula. Both the large and small portions were easily visable on both thursday and saturday nights, the larger of the 2 being 2 large to fit completely in the eyepeice. Someone else with an equal sized scope used a nebula filter and some more delicate detail was visable although it was dimmer and some starlight was omitted and I think the combination of the shockwave and the starfield around it was more impressive to see without the filters.


On a side note, a large solar scope had been setup, with both white light and H alpha used friday afternoon, and I saw sunspots and a small flare for the first time.