Lynn Blackburn and I observed at the Fredricksen Meadow near Happy Jack
starting on Wed June 26. We had incredibly clear skies on Wed and Thurs before
the sky started deteriorating. The sky was really stunning. It was so dark
that the Milky Way seemed to cause light pollution as it rose!
We had a couple perfect nights with only two or three distractions. First, I
delayed applying insect repellent for a couple hours... the insects didn't
delay and found me immediately. Then my exposure program, Maxim DL6, kept
crashing when I was setting up. That seemed to result from a recent
installation of a no-name driver program. Deleting it fixed the problem. The
last distraction was a flat tire just outside of cell phone range, perhaps from
driving too fast on potholes in primitive road 305. This was only a daytime
distraction and things worked out fine.
All of this was worth it, I accumulated more than four hours of exposure on
M101 in HaRGB, not counting time spent focusing and framing shots in my push-to
scope, etc.
Lynn and Dorelyn were both there and Lynn was evaluating "Richest Field Scopes"
using one of his refractors with many different eyepieces. Stay tuned... We
plan to build one or more of these rich field scopes at the ATM meetings this
fall. Finally, on Saturday we had a great lunch at Lori and Mitch's "cabin" (a
really nice house) east of Clint's Well. We toured her 12 foot observatory and
lots of new equipment including another dome and pier from a local estate sale
which she just "stumbled into". I think she has a guardian astronomy angel.
Clear skies,
Paul Lind
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