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(This article originally appeared in the Q1 2005 STAR news letter. -Ian)
Winter
Star Party 2005
by
Ian Hewitt
It’s
winter time again in Raleigh, and that brings the chance to escape to
warmer climes!
This
week is one of the “hottest” tickets in astronomy circles. Year
after year, it’s a very popular event with a guaranteed sell out
months in advance. About a dozen members of the Raleigh Astronomy
Club made the 17-plus hour trek down to the Sunshine State,
telescopes in tow, for a chance to see southern delights. These
included: Bill Webster, Jerry Watson, Al Hamrick, John Nigro, Jim
Pressley, Jim Anderson, Pierre Faucher, Scott Carpenter, Christian
Carpenter, Jerry Zerbach, and Paul Rust.
The
WSP is held at the Girl Scout Camp on West Summerland Key. It’s
about 30 miles north of Key West and south of the city of Marathon on
US-1. The key itself is very small and the camp is right on the
beach. Although RV’s are allowed, space is limited and the weather
is nice, so camping is the order of the day. There are plenty of
restaurants close by, and shower facilities are in the camp, so it’s
not exactly roughing it.
Dedicated
astronomers that we are, we headed down on Super Bowl Sunday (watch
that traffic in Jacksonville!) to get in line for the Monday opening
of WSP. While some members slept in line outside the gates, some of
us spent that evening with the Scott family. Gary and his family
were very active in the Club and recently moved to Melbourne. As
always, their hospitality was great.
The
weather was very good this year, topping into the mid 70’s during
the day, and dropping into 60’s during the night, with the
exception of the last two nights, where we had wind, a bit of rain,
and record lows of 50 degrees! We were able to observe for at least
part of every night. However, for all but the two days, there was
always a band of low clouds on the southern horizon, hiding the
southern treasures that we came to see. When the rain came through
on Thursday afternoon with the cooler weather, the horizon opened up
and the game was afoot!
The
WSP is located at about 24 degrees north latitude, which provides
almost 14 degrees more southern sky than here in Raleigh. In
addition, the orientation of the key means that the southern horizon
is over the ocean, so it is very clear down to the horizon. For me,
it was the first time I had ever seen Omega Centauri or the Southern
Cross (which stands up nicely on the horizon at about 2:30 in the
morning).
Some
of the objects that are available to be seen are the Coal Sack Nebula
(Dark Nebula), Eta Carinae, Omega Centauri, and many globular and
open clusters. For those of us who are working on our Caldwell
Observing programs, it provides an opportunity to reach down to about
Caldwell 98 or 99 (out of 109).
There were many other objects to be sketched including M6,
M7, M41, M64, M83, M109, C40 (NGC 3626), C46 (NGC 2261), C53 (NGC
3115), C54 (NGC 2506), C59 (NGC 3242), C60 (NGC 4038), C61 (NGC
4039), C67 (NGC 1097), C73 (NGC 1851), C74 (NGC 3132), C75 (NGC
6124), C77 (NGC 5128), C79 (NGC 3201), C84 (NGC 5286), C85 (IC 2391),
C88 (NGC 5823), C91 (NGC 3532), C98 (NGC 4609), C99, SAA 8 (NGC
5139), SAA 13 (NGC 2359), SAA 54 (Fornax Galaxy Cluster), SAA 64 (NGC
2232), SAA 68 (NGC 2301), SAA 70 (NGC 2438), SAA 71 (NGC 2467), and
SAA 82 (NGC4361).
Of
course, the superb observing is not the only reason to go to the
Winter Star Party; it also features vendors, speakers, door prizes,
and the chance to hob-knob with other astronomers from as far away as
Canada. Now that’s a long drive!
There
were many vendors present, including all the well known names in
amateur astronomy. Meade had a large pavilion, just having announced
their acquisition of Coronado (but to Bill’s great disappointment
they had no PSTs).
Other
vendors there included Al and Judy Nagler of Televue Optics, Howie
Glatter (but no Green Laser Pointers allowed), Camera Concepts, and
Astronomy-To-Go.
One
of the other main attractions at WSP are the workshops. Most of these
are focused on imaging and were excellent. They included all day
workshops on using Photoshop for processing astronomical images (by
Scott Ireland), Antarctic Meteorites, Richard Deluca on Stonehenge,
and Don Machholz on comet hunting.
As if
that’s not all, there was a very organized children’s program, a
large swap meet, over a hundred door prizes from books to eyepieces
to complete telescopes, and a cook-out on Thursday night.
It
was a great event and personally, I look forward to going back again!
See
You There!!
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