FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Deep Impact Star Party

[Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

What a grand evening at the Blue Hills Observatory Deep Impact Star 
Party.  A perfect night!

There were around 30 people and close to 20 telescopes set up. After 
most got set up we sat down and had a great feast. Lots of good food.

At sunset, Mercury and Venus were lovely in the low west. Jupiter 
shone brightly nearly overhead pointing the was to Spica and the 
comet. Smoke from the wildfires could be seen in the far southeast.

The first deep sky object easily seen was omega Centauri  low on the 
southern horizon. It was easy in binoculars, but after about 20 
minutes it went below the far hills.

When we got past twilight people started looking for the comet. It 
was not easy. Stan and I tried imaging it with my Deep Sky Imager Pro 
and his 12.5" Cassegrain. We never go any useable images. Part of the 
problems seems to be trouble with the focusing and tracking.

As 10:52 PM MST approached we gave up and switched to visual 
observing. While the comet was indeed visible, my eyes must be 
getting old as it was right on the border for me. Even with my 13.1" 
DOB, it was extremely faint. At 10:52 nothing seem to change. I 
continued to watch for another 10 minutes without seeing any change. 
I wandered around and talked to others who also failed to see any 
change. Several of the observers seemed to have disappeared. I later 
found them in Stan's house watching the NASA Sat TV channel. It seems 
the project was a great success from NASA's point.

There is an excellent movie of the impact on the JLP site at

http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/deep_impact_crash_0704.html

Even without seeing the sky light up from the Deep Impact, all in 
all, the Deep Impact Star Party was a great success.

I've set up a web page with images from the star party. Click on the 
images to see the full sized image.

See

http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/DeepImpact.html

Jeff

-- 
Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html

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