Nov 3rd – 7:45am…Juanita’s here, all the vehicles are ready and we’ll be on the road in 15 mins., breakfast in Perry, then on to the Chiefland Astronomy Village!
11:30am…We’re here, unload John’s bike, got an RV spot with 30amp power (for AC-which I suspect we’ll need later), send hubby off - it's a chicks weekend! By 3:30 we’re all set up inside and out, have visited with Scott H. and Jeff L. who stopped by to say hello, got our tees, sweats and registration packages. Juanita’s (J from now on) jumpin’ from excitement and awe! No way we’re gonna get a nap in before observing tonite.
3:30pm …The property owners in residence are having an observatory open-house, so we visited as many as we could – it was pretty hot in the sun. Across the street from the obs. field, Joe Mize has a large shed with a roll off roof, I told him since I had some of his pics hanging in my office, I’d get him and his ‘scope too! Got some tips and moved next door to a two car garage with six ‘scopes in it, just about one of everything. Back to the obs. field and behind it the big white dome of Tom Clark’s observatory beckons – I wanted to see ‘the beast’. Tom’s 42’ dob is incredibly humongous! Wood cabinets hold eyepieces and accessories, space music plays softly and the obligatory Area 51 alien (pink! Is it a girl?) stands guard to one side. A pic is posted in the forum.
5:45pm …Finishing up home cooked chicken stir fry while wandering over to the Pole Barns. The Twilight Talk is about Gould’s Belt and my apologies to the speaker, he was great but I didn’t write down his name!!! This is a belt around the Milky Way of new star development that started in Perseus, I think, about 10,000,000 yrs ago (I know I'm not remembering all this correctly!) and has expanded and traveled around the galaxy in an identifiable pattern at a 20 degree angle off the plane, generating new stars as the previous bursts hit and compressed other gas clouds. A chain of explosions! Mr. Gould proposed such an event to explain his findings back in the 60’s (?). He has been proven right - as astronomers age these stars, they can follow the whole belt around the MW. (That was the layman’s version folks). It was pretty interesting, not too much physics for me to follow and I’d not heard of this ‘belt’ before, sorry I didn’t take notes instead of relying on last minute memory.
6:30pm …J already had that StarBlast up and ready before dinner. The crescent moon and Venus are gorgeous & setting quickly as we head for the scopes. We had a real good time tonite, confirming J’s ‘kills’ and I found a couple more things I thought I had (M33-gx in Triangulum for one), but couldn’t find the documentation on. I also picked off and documented a few NGC’s and a couple of doubles stars in Cas (for my NEXT list! Scott tells me I can use AutoStar for the NGCs? Yahoo!). When our backs and knees got tired, we taught each other a new constellation or two and worked on star hopping from different charts. Scott visited us, we visited him. Definitely need to get J a better setup for tomorrow though – that thing belongs on a table, not the ground! We quit at 10:30 to get more coffee & hot choc, back out at 11:30, it’s really nice out tonite, cool but not cold, some dew but that doesn’t affect J’s dob and Mr. Meade had a fashionable Kendrick collar on. Let’s see: Mars never did get ‘good’, Orion came up, J nailed M1 in less than 5 minutes – there should have been no livin’ with her, but she was so happy it was contagious! Before we knew it, it was almost 2:00am and we just couldn’t bend over the ‘scopes anymore. I think J bagged 8-9 Messiers and we enjoyed the heck out of the night. The Taurid fireballs were consistent thoughout the evening and startling in their brightness. A successful evening – time to head into a comfy, warm camper. A picture of our setup is posted in the pictures section of this forum. It wasn’t the biggest or smallest camper but we and all our gear fit just fine. More tomorrow.