12/28/2004

While Kim and I were in Alaska for Christmas, her Dad arranged for us to attend a star party at the local High School. They had an 8" Celestron SCT, a 10" Meade LX200 EMC SCT, and a whopping 26" Newtonian telescope!

I started off the evening at 5:45pm looking at the Double Cluster in Cassieopeia with my ETX-90 from my in-laws front deck. If you can stand the cold, Alaska is a great place to stargaze in winter since it gets dark around 3pm! When Dwight got home from work he picked Kim and I up and we drove up to Burchell High School

The 26 inch reflector was housed in a large aluminum sided building with a retractable roof. The 10 inch Meade Schmidt Cassegrain was mounted on pier outside the building. When we arrived we met Tim and his assistant who had Uranus centered in the SCT! This was my first time viewing a planet further than Saturn. Very cool! I was surprised to learn that Uranus was the brightest of the objects in the eyepiece.

As we were looking at Uranus, Tim went inside and slewed the big reflector to the huge globular cluster Hercules (M13). I had never looked through a scope this big so I was amazed to see such depth into this famous cluster. I was on cloud nine the entire evening. About 12 other people arrived over the course of the evening and shared in the amazing views. With the SCT we looked at the moon, M42, M31 and the Double Cluster in Cassieopeia. With the big scope we saw Vega (which looked like Venus in my little ETX, since it was so bright), M57, M27, and M45. Around 8:10pm, someone pointed out the northern lights putting on a show in the eastern sky. What a treat!

We had arrived at 7:10pm and before I knew it, it was after 10pm and everyone had left except for Tim, his assistant, Kim, Dwight and I. I would like to have stayed all night, but I was getting cold and we hadn't eaten any supper. So we thanked Tim and headed home for a hot dinner! Thank you Dwight for arranging this awesome evening!