CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: Great Lakes Star Gaze?

Well, my first star party was quite a bit of fun. First, some background. I'm not a camping person, in fact, I've never been camping in my life. My parents have a cottage about 7 or 8 miles from the GLSG site, so my plan was to observe each night, then leave in the morning, crash at the cottage, and come back the following night to do it all over again. This turned out to be a flawed plan, mainly because of the weather.

Friday:

I had my truck packed Thursday night, so after sleeping in until about 11:00, I finally got on the road at around noon. It's a 2.4 hour drive from my house to the cottage, so I was good to go. After doing some "snack shopping", I ate dinner, and headed out to the RV park where the GLSG was held. I registered, and found a place to park my truck. Parking was scarce, as the turnout was pretty heavy (about 110 people) for the relatively small observing area. A very kind couple rearranged their campsite to make room for me to park. That was the first sign that the people that attend star parties are cut from a different cloth. I set up my equipment (an LX200 8 inch classic), and then headed down to the pavillion for the opening comments. After that, I climbed back up the hill to the observing site, and started checking out all of the nice equipment that people had brought with them. The site itself sits atop quite a hill. The only way to the top is by walking up a steep gravel road, or walking up one of two narrow and steep horse trails. Either way, you will get your heart pumping! Night fell, and the sky was nice and dark, with the milky way stretching from horizon to horizon. Andromeda was visible naked eye, as were some other objects that usually aren't from the city. I spent a lot of time seeking out objects that are either blocked from my usual observing by obstructions, or objects mainly found in the southern sky. Living north of Detroit, my southern sky is non existent. Having spent so much time throughout my life in the northern lower peninsula, I knew to bring clothes ranging from summer wear all of the way through winter wear. As the night wore on, the temps kept dropping, and it was a very wet night. The temps bottomed out at around 38 degrees, and the dew was very heavy. My dew heater is a home brew unit, but has four settings. I had to run it on the highest setting(fist time ever), and I was barely keeping up. Finally at around 04:30, I called it quits, and the fact that the atmosphere had taken a dump at about 03:30 helped to make it an easy decision. I spent the remaing 2.5 hours sitting in my truck trying to keep warm. The combination of wet and cold finally beat the winter clothes that I had brought. The long and short of it was that those 2.5 hours spent in my truck were quite miserable, and it was at that point that I decided that I wouldn't be doing that again.

Saturday:

Not wanting to repeat Friday's "cold truck trick", I decided that I would not bring my scope on Saturday, but instead park outside the observing area, and steal peeks through the other peoples equipment. My plan was to stay until around 0100, and then leave. Well, the night was much nicer than Friday, and I was kicking myself for not packing my equipment. The temps only dropped into the 50's, and it was a much drier night. Not only that, but the seeing was quite good. Being such a good night threw my "leave early" plan right out of the window, and I ended staying until dawn. Overall, Saturday was the better of the two days, and I blew it. The up side was that I was able to look through quite a few nice scopes. I spent some time at 22 inch dob, and saw some familiar objects like I'd never seen them before! It will truly help my observing through my 8 inch scope to have seen these details more clearly in the bigger scopes.

Overall, I learned a few things:

--Don't underestimate the power of cold. Pack for the expected conditions, and then exceed them with warmer clothes.

--The people at a star party are about as friendly as they come.

--Camping is a "must" to get the most of the experience.

--Be more prepared with an observing plan. I played it loose this time, but next time, I will be better prepared with objects that I want to observe.

--Working midnights for the past 16 years helps when it comes to staying awake all night...lol.

The bottom line for me was that I had a good time. I met a lot of nice people, and enjoyed a weekend of astronomy. The weather was about as good as you could order, and the host club did a fine job, given the space constraints.

Tim

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One blue telescope.
One white telescope.
One white(formerly gray!)telescope.

Imagine a world without hypothetical situations.

Edited by Tim13 (09/25/04 12:23 AM)