Public SP 6.7.14

[merle]

Great Public Star Party last night. Despite most of the day being cloudy with some rain there were about 70 visitors throughout the night. Great lunar views, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… we even got comet Panstarrs on the imaging platform again. We also viewed the pass of the ISS and a -7 Iridium flare over Onan. Dew became a major factor as anything in Papa Bear became drenched, We spent a good portion of the shut down dedicated to drying out and removing heavy dew from the scopes.

I stayed an took a few images of the ground fog encroaching on the SA Casby Observatory…

[Deane Clark]

Thanks for capturing that, Merle. The dew was a major nuisance, but the fog looked cool creeping up on us from the ball fields.

Also looking very cool was Mars. The seeing was good enough to use 271x and even 362x in my 6" refractor. I haven't seen that much detail on Mars in a long time. Syrtis Major was very prominent, like a giant dark shark's tooth, and there seemed to be a bright limb haze or clouds running right from one polar cap to the other along the western limb, except for a gap near Syrtis Major.

On Saturn, I could see the C ring in the ring gaps on either side. Also, the equatorial region on the planet was subtly brighter than the adjacent zones, with the polar zone even darker.

Even though I had to give up by 12:30 because of the dew, I was really glad I went. I was surprised there weren't more people out, seeing as the CSC was dead-on predicting the clearing around sunset.

[Kurt A. Casby]

Thanks for the image Merle, beautiful shot!

I was hoping to get to ELO in time for the Classroom training, dinner, and the public evening. I ended up at a graduation party instead, long story.

Perhaps I'll manage to make it down there someday!

Clear Skies,
Kurt

[Roxanne]

That is a great picture, Merle!

[Dave-]

Thanks for sharing the photo, Merle. Nice way to top off a good evening at ELO.