Morehead Viewing Session

On Saturday, July 25, I went out to the Ebeneezer Church Recreation Area for the Morehead Planetarium's skywatching session. I brought the heavy artillery, plus my 4" refractor. I arrived an hour early so I could get a good spot and get everything setup.

Upon arriving at 8pm, there was a bit of weather looming. Some small rain clouds were slowly approaching, so I held off on setup. By 8:30, they still hadn't passed. A look at the radar showed two small green specs headed our way, with nothing else for hundreds of miles. What luck! We got a few minutes of drizzle, but then it began to clear.

It seemed pretty safe by 9pm, so I setup the refractor. I went right to M13 and showed that to quite a few people. I couldn't get any stars to resolve in it yet, but it still wasn't fully dark. This was my first chance to test the tracking motors and home-brew power adapter, which worked very well. By 9:20 the sky was clearing, so I started setting up the 18" dob.

I finished by about 9:35, at which point it completely clouded over. Figures! I spent the next hour picking things out through holes in the clouds. There seemed to be lots of holes forming around the Ring Nebula, so lots of people got to see that. At times there just weren't any showcase objects visible, so I branched out with the help of Starmap Pro on my iPhone. I went to M12 at one point as the best I could find, which went over ok, but didn't evoke the "wow!" reaction.

Around 10:40, the sky cleared. I went right to M13, and people of course went nuts over it. Then we hit the Swan Nebula, Dumbbell Nebula, and Wild Ducks. The crowd ate it up. 11pm came quick, so I had to pack it up and leave after a quick view of Jupiter. The sky was fairly unstable all night, so none of the views were particularly crisp.

One group of "civilians" brought a dob that looked to be about 10", and they seemed to find at least a couple of things. As I was packing up, they asked me to come identify a nebula they'd found which turned out to be the Swan. It was a nice view, so hopefully they'll continue to use that scope.

It was a good crowd of mostly youngish families and lots of children. There were many good questions, plus the typical "how much does that cost?" sorts of questions. The other Mike and I were the only CHAOS members present. Between our scopes and the scopes that the Morehead folks brought, there seemed to be enough to keep the crowd entertained. Of those people who stayed until the end, I think most were quite satisfied. Many people left during the cloudy portion though, but I think a lot of them got to at least see something early on.

It is worth noting that the clear sky chart predicted no clouds at all for 12 hours before and after this event. Sometimes it can be spot-on, and other times it's just flat wrong.