Public Observing & Imaging Workshop
by Jim Hendrickson
Another of those unecpected cloudy all-day Saturdays leads to concerns over the forecast clear skies for Saturday night. An all-night CCD imaging workshop previously scheduled by Bob Horton, who tried for nine cloudy weeks back in 2010, decided that the forecast was too uncertain to have members haul out gear to Seagrave Observatory so he deicded to postpone it by mid-afternoon.
The sky become (mostly) clear by sundown and several members headed to Seagrave Observatory. Conrad Cardano and John Kocur set up for the astro-imaging, and Bob Horton brought along the SBIG camera to do a test run on the 16-inch Meade.
Waves of broken clouds would periodically interrupt observing and imaging, and the usual public night closed at 22:00. A few members had stayed and gathered around John Kocur's imaging station which was set up on the pad to the north of the 16-inch Meade. We mostly observed Saturn.
Later on John set up his LPI camera and recorded some images of Saturn, but was not able to overcome a software issue which caused the image to be overexposed.
John and I stayed out until about 1:30.
