6/14/2014
by Matt White
A gloomy looking Saturday gave way to clear skies for Saturday evening’s Public Night. I arrived early at the observatory, soon to be joined by Dr. Ellsworth Starring and Kent Cameron. A while later, Steve Siok, Steve Hubbard, Jim Hendrickson, and Tom Thibault, arrived giving us a more than adequate staff for the evening.
Tom ran the 12” Meade, Steve Hubbard ran the 16” Meade and Steve Siok, Kent, and I ran the Clark.
The first object to pop into view was Mars and I acquired the red planet immediately. Due to the turbulent atmosphere, seeing was somewhat poor and very little detail could be seen.
A short while later, as the public began to filter in, Steve trained over to Saturn. Most of the evening was spent observing the ringed wonder as the seeing began to steadily improve.
Tom spent most of the evening showing Messier objects and Steve did some imaging of Saturn giving an astrophotography demo for our guests.
I estimated a total of fifteen to twenty guests this evening and the crowd had thinned out by ten thirty. We had at least one group who had joined us the previous week.
Kent and I swung the scope around to Epsilon Lyrae the “Double-Double” to see if we could split both pairs. For this exercise, I selected a 9mm eyepiece, rendering a magnification of 296x.
After one more look at Mars, we trained over to the waning gibbous moon and centered our interest on the Tycho region. Jim had his 3.7 mm eyepiece which gave us a magnification of 720x. With the bright moon, exquisite detail was visible along the terminator.
We closed down around 11:30 pm.
Submitted by,
Matt White
