Star Parties

SGL5 2010 Lucksall Camping Site

Only managed to get over to the campsite for a night, but it was well worth the effort. A big thanks to Mike who did a great job organising the whole Star Party.  The camp site was clean and quiet, even though the site was quite small and you could easily get to the pitches it felt quite secure and I had no issues in leaving my kit assembled and unattended during the day. The food was excellent on the Friday night. I would like to have stayed for the Saturday night as well, but commitments meant I had to be home. I believe that the skies were better on the Saturday night, but I was quite happy with the Friday night. I'm already looking forward to next years! I suspect that with over 120 people for SGL5, SGL6 will be at the absolute limit of the camp site and that for SGL7 (2012) we'll have to find a new site. I fancy a site further down into Dorset / Devon as I think that the skies will be a little darker. 

Autumn Equinox Star Party 2009

We had a great time at Kelling over the  weekend. The telescope area and the hospitality tent were a great success - having the ability to make a cuppa in the middle of the night without waking anyone up was fantastic. It really helped in keeping warm. 

A big thanks to Daz and Jon for superb food. All the meals were great with plenty to go around and seconds (well if you got in before James that is  )

Here are a few images of the scopes and people. 

The first night was cloudy and once darkness fell, a large circle of chairs formed and there was drink and Pringles. Most people started to head off to bed by around 1 - 1.30am, as there was no chance of the skies clearing. A number of the group couldn't have operated a scope by then anyway!!! A very funny evening, haven't laughed so much in ages. Apparently there were complaints from the RED field that we were too noisy - bloody cheek if you ask me. The place if full of astronomers and once again they were all tucked up in bed by 9pm!!!! If it had cleared they would have missed it! 

Friday was another kettle of fish though, the skies cleared and we had clear skies through to about 3:30am. I managed to get a couple of hours of M81 and the Bubble nebula. I decided to take Bias frames before I went to bed but the flats I thought I would leave until the next day. BIG MISTAKE - over night, maybe the change in temp loosened the thumb screw, whatever the cause the camera was slightly loose the next morning and the scope/camera orientation was lost. So I had no flats.

Saturday we spent the day out and about, we went to the beech - it was nice and sunny but there was a very obvious mist along the coast. The afternoon was very annoying as it was lovely blue sky right the way through the afternoon but as the sun sank the mist came in and ended up clouding over completely. 

There was a very brief spell of clear skies at around 10pm, but that only lasted an hour or so... I then spend until nearly 1:30 am with Michael Morris looking at lunar images that we had both taken and talking about filters and imaging camera's - thoroughly enjoyed that! 

From Memory Sunday started off cloudy, but cleared mid morning. Lots of people were packing up and heading off home. Went round and said goodbye to everyone that I could find, I'm sure I missed lots of people, notably Ian - sorry about that Ian. Steve's connection to the Internet was vital at this point and advised us that there was going to be clear skies till after midnight, so I moved my setup down the field to get a better chance of seeing the horsy.

Night fell and the stars came out, the skies were the best of the two clear nights, with transparency being fairly good. The dew came down, but that was quite early and didn't get any worse (unlike last year). 

I started with M15, just to get the guiding going and make sure that everything worked correctly. I still had an odd Dec graph in PHD, but as I was doing 2 minute subs it didn't matter. 
In the end I turned the graph off - which immediately cheered me up. But I was limited to 5 minute subs on my next target which was the Crab Nebula, M1.

We had a couple of small banks of high cloud which spoiled a few subs as the guide star was lost. But on the whole it was a great night. Cloud finally stopped play at around 4am. I took my Bias shots and then used Steve's light box for my flats. I called it a night at 5am and went to bed, leaving Steve and Jon up.