Paul,
Will you provide directions to the meadow from the Phoenix area?
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 30, 2019, at 6:20 PM, Paul Lind <pulind@xxxxx> wrote:--
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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