Moon, Saturn & M57 through the Alvan Clark
by Matt White
A clear Saturday night for stargazing, what a way to start a vacation.
With the moon visible in daylight, I decided to show up early. When I arrived at Seagrave, just after eight, the gate was already open. Bill Gucfa was in the process of opening the dome so I assisted him in getting to scope ready for the public night.
Even with the still bright sky, the details of the lunar surface were plainly visible. We focus our attention to the alpine valley section of the moon. Bill produced a zoom eyepiece which allowed us to go from 127x to 318x with just a twist of the eyepiece.
At eight thirty, I hung the sign as we already had a few guests with us. We started with a slow but steady line of people who came through to observe the moon with us. One of our guests had his own telescope and asked if he could set up in the field below. (This helped with the overflow later.)
By the time we trained over to Saturn, the dome was full of people. The seeing was not too bad and Saturn’s largest companion, Titan, was easily observed. As the skies began to darken, a few more of the Saturn moons were seen.
Throughout the night, Bill and I fielded several questions about membership with the society, a fact I found encouraging. While we were trained on Saturn, I counted over 30 people before I lost count.
After everyone had taken a second look at Saturn, we swung the scope to the east and trained on M57, the Ring Nebula. This planetary nebula is about 2300 light years distant. We explained the concept of averted vision to a few of our guests who had never used a telescope before. The ooh’s and ahh’s that followed gauged our success.
By the time we closed down, it was after eleven. In the process of putting the scope to bed, I perfected my technique of placing the canvas cover on the scope. (Jim has the photographic evidence.) My mentor, Dave, will be pleased.
When Bill and I compared notes, we came up with a figure of 35 to 40 guests. Not a bad showing at all!
