There's a thread of mine in the forum from a couple weeks asking noob questions to astro-party veterans. Let it be said that the advice given was precious as always, so a preliminary thank you to all who offered guidance!
Anyway, the party has come and gone and my eyes are still full of starlight ten days later… it was beyond expectations. The location is St. Barthélémy in the Alps, Aosta Valley. The family came along for daytime walks and good food – plenty of that there! When we got there there was a light drizzle and people moaning everywhere, but out of three nights we had two good ones, so I count myself lucky!
I only brought my smallest refractor (ED70/420) on an HEQ5 for imaging. I set up in a nearly all-imagers’ field – note to self, get there very early next time! This time I managed a good spot but it was a near thing! For eyepiece time, I relied on others’ kindness and received plenty.
The party-goers were mostly nice people, with rare rude ones. I think that I get the “imagers-observers” divide observed on this forum a little better now. There was a huge imbalance, and many imagers did not care enough about people observing around them to put red filters on their laptop, some of which blazingly white. Also, the vibe was much more relaxed in the "observing" corners of field, imagers being (understandably) very tense about anyone getting close to their mount.
Imaging-wise I focused on only one object for the two nights – the Andromeda Galaxy, see below the result. With the abundance of guidance around, I learned a couple neat tricks.
As for observation, I spent many good moments with a fellow called Mario, who was just about the only eyepiece-wielding astrophile in the imagers' field. He had a C8 Edge on an AM3 piloted by an AsiAir Mini. I had the impression that the rich was a bit at the limit, payload-wise. I helped him troubleshoot for a good part of our time together (his first outing with an AsiAir) but we also enjoyed nice observations through his amazing eyepiece collection and especially a lovely Panoptic 41mm (no vignetting!): best object we saw was (at my instigation) Caroline’s Rose, which he did not yet know; also the Double Cluster; M33 (nice! Hint of spiral movement), Jupiter (too low, in bad seeing), the Lagoon and Trifid (without filters, and I loved the way the dust lanes were visible). Throughout all our observations we chatted happily and discovered he stayed at my hotel, so the chat continued in days thereafter ;D
Later I moved to the other field (more mixed population) and had the time of a lifetime looking through the 24” Dobsonian (Reginato Supermaser 24”) of a gentleman called Luca: familiar objects in nearly photographic detail! The term "mind-blowing" was, for once, not hyperbole! Luca is an amazingly generous fellow and had an open shop with a long queue running throughout the event. He must have had the least time at the eyepiece of everybody. I’ve observed through an even larger scope on that field, but no other scope came close to the quality of image of Luca's light bucket (down to a great mirror and perfect collimation I guess). I saw:
- The Dumbbell
- The Western and Eastern Veil, so features-rich… cosmic lace in all its glory!
- Andromeda Galaxy, its dust lanes going across the curve to outline the whole spiral structure of the galaxy
- M33 the Triangulum Galaxy, most impressive of all: its central bulge and two wide open main arms, with a wonderful flocculent appearance. I managed to see NGC604 as a perfectly evident and well-defined patch … my first extra-Milky Way nebula!
- M15: perhaps too magnified for the seeing, but Luca also advised (and it’s very useful knowledge) that pinpoint stars are not his huge and super-fast Dob’s forte.
Being super-fast, as just stated, his scope had the attraction of being a real cannon but manageable in terms of dimensions. I had to do one step or two only when at Zenith and even though I missed tracking I thought I more or less managed to steer it around. I also observed through a massive 76cm aperture Dob (more of a tower than a scope…) and we observed M74, but I could barely make out the core and faint arms. In yet another large but more manageable Dob nearby (must have been a 40cm/16”, nice size) I saw the Fireworks galaxy – much clearer than in my 8” scopes, and with a better core/halo distinction, but not mind-blowingly different.
I also enjoyed the solar observations during the day on Saturday: lots of prominences, lots of solar spots… beautiful!!
On the whole, looking through all these scope (and more) gave me a better appreciation for my own gear and skills. Apart from the properly awe-inspiring observations through Luca’s monster, I felt that my own modestly sized scopes take me a good way there. But the big dob fever has taken, along with a better understanding of the logistical difficulties past a certain size, and also of the fact that below a certain size the upgrade might not be so noticeable. First I have to convince the family to buy a small property in a Bortle 2 location, then I'll think of the sweet spot ;D
Family-wise, unfortunately my boy caught a fever as soon as we got there… he mostly saw the bedroom (not that he complained about it ;D). The wife and daughter came with me on the daytime visit at the camp where the shops and solar scopes were, so we window-shopped together and did solar observation and it was fun. My daughter even braved the cold and came with me on Saturday night for an hour or so. We saw Andromeda in a lot of different instruments (super fun: big 100mm binos – wow! – Luca’s fabulous Dob); Bode’s galaxies in a big MAK, …… and as we walked around I pointed out objects in the sky visible to the unaided eye. I LOVED that, and she had fun too.
After all is said and done… I'm actively looking around for the next star party 
As promised, my one picture from the event … better a decent one than two bad ones, I say!
