[LVAS] Death Valley Furnace Creek Star Party

[Fred Rayworth]

All,

 

Well, I must say I was quite surprised and very pleased at how the star party turned out. We had been thinking about going since Cathedral Gorge, but didn't make up our minds until Wednesday. I'm glad we decided to go.

 

Despite being 190 feet below sea level, and despite the surrounding mountains in a haze, the sky was relatively clear Friday night. I tried to cram in as much as I could because Dave Blanchette had checked the clear sky clock and it showed a front moving in Saturday night.

 

We had a lot of visitors Friday and I showed plenty of "tourist" objects to the public. Then as John Heller did his presentation, I got back to my faint fuzzies. I saw the Pisces galaxy cluster that is mentioned in the current issue of S&T. I saw 9 galaxies within the field of my 70 degree Q-70 eyepiece. By sweeping around, I found two more making a total of 11 galaxies. I also looked at Jupiter, Uranus, and countless other objects.

 

Saturday night was nothing to worry about as it seemed the sky was even clearer than Friday, at least for a while. I was able to find many of the objects I just couldn't pick out Friday night. As the evening progressed, the hole in the sky got smaller and smaller until it was time to pack up.

 

Overall, I logged 40 new objects, 9 of them Herschel 2's.

 

A great trip!

 

Fred

 
 		 	   		  
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