The Fall’N’Stars 2010 Star Party has come and gone.
We had 22 registrants this year and at least one night of usable
weather/clear skies (Friday night).
You can find some of the first images at http://kingston.rasc.ca/pics/fallnstars/2010/
with more to come over the next few days.
The first 12 images there are 15 second exposures of Jupiter and 1/2 to
3/4 lit moonlit clouds in the southeast. A few images of the area with the Pleiades rising in the east, a a couple of Orion rising the next morning.
Saturday was not bad at all, with a lot of chit chat and socializing.
At 10:00am we had the official Rocket Launch to signify the opening but it was the only one as we had run out of engine components for a closing launch. The rocket was recovered for the 2nd straight year however (we have lost 2 or 3 to trees in the last 8 years).
The swap meet at 10:30 in the morning was great, with Hank bringing along what was left from Norm’s estate, and I hear that sales were brisk.
The 60cm RASCKC Venor telescope was onsite that Friday night as well but it (as well as everyone else’s) was packed up during the day as we were expecting rain saturday evening & night.
There are some of the images on how the Venor gets packed up and
travels.
We had three sets of talks in the afternoon:
Mark Coady on DSP (Dark Sky Preserves), Doug Angle on some kind of
historical thoughtbending science and astronomy, and myself with some images from the Radio Jove project that Kim & I are building, some images from our Canon A540, taking 64 second exposures and 64 sec dark frames but now using a script that took 17 images in a row without human intervention. Lastly was a quick trip to the RASC General Assembly in Fredericton New Brunswick.
We took some images of solar flares through a Coronado Solarmax 80 and soon it was time for the catered dinner, always a highlight. The photo contest came next with Hank Bartlett coming away with first prize with a lunar image. There were only 3 people entering this year. Odds were very good!
Door prizes came next and again this year we went through the entire
attendance and started around a 2nd time. Thanks to all of the prize donours!
The grand door prize (the RASCKC’s 1999 Bushnell Astroscan) was won by Joanne Burns and the Raffle prize (Celestron firstscope tabletop Dobsonian) was won by our own Susan Gagnon!
Ask Susan how many telescopes she has now!
It did start raining late in the evening with cloud and clear patches
intermingling. Many folks headed home that night and come Sunday morning i was basically the organizing committee and 1 or 2 others. It was a nice sunrise with fog in the field and trees.
We managed to clean up, lock up and be out by 10am and most folks got home by 11 to a very nice day. Exhausted but still a very nice day.
FM1
FM2
