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#1
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it
due to a previous committment... Gil |
#2
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
http://www.stellafane.com/convention/2006/index.html
"Gil" wrote in message ups.com... Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it due to a previous committment... Gil |
#3
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
Reports on Stellafane Links that I have found:
http://forums.astronomydaily.com/viewtopic.php?p=43579 http://community.webshots.com/album/552709562FJsuGA http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=45096 http://www.assne.org/board/viewtopic...eec2bbd0e90173 Clear Skies!!!! Andy Andy's Astro Page http://home.g-net.net/~andy/astro.htm ---------------------------------- "Gil" wrote in message ups.com... Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it due to a previous committment... Gil |
#4
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
Gil wrote: Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it due to a previous committment... Gil Attendance was way down relative to previous years, perhaps off by 25%-35% up through noontime on Saturday. Smallest gathering I've seen in at least 20 years (and I've been attending 42 years without interuption), especially considering the very fine weather that prevailed. Also noted amazingly light highway traffic on Rt. 91 returning home. People finally feeling the pinch from the gas prices? JBortle |
#5
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it
due to a previous committment... My wife and I arrived Saturday morning, and did the usual stuff. By evening, it looked like a storm was rolling in and a lot of folks lit out like it was a hurricane or worse! It never did rain. Around 10:30 I walked over to the observing area just downhill of the McGregor Observatory to see what I could see. There weren't many folks left, and I looked through a couple of scopes at some targets in Sagittarius. I wandered about, and came upon a guy with a little dob. I asked him what size the mirror was, and he said 4", and off-axis. This caught my attention, and when I asked him for more info he said that he was Dan MacShane of DGMOptics. Well, I spent almost 3 hours observing through that little newtonian, and trying out different filters - as astro filters seem to be where Dan is devoting most of his development time. I had a great time, and really enjoyed the fine performance of the 4". We chased holes in the clouds, and sometimes lost the target before we could both get a look. Epsilon Lyra split beautifully at 80x, blah blah blah. Great optics. I also was impressed with his filters, and he mentioned that they were favourably reviewed by Phil Harrington in Astronomy Magazine. He handed me one to blink M31, and I was surprised to find that it did substantially enhance the view. His nebula filter really lit up the M57, but did not kill the stars. I would like to compare them side-by-side with Lumicon's. I had a great night observing with Dan, and felt that I was amply rewarded for not chickening out like my friends! Oh, and a young guy observing with us asked why Dan bothered to make the off-axis mirrors round as opposed to leaving them pie shaped. Good question, no? Dennis |
#6
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
"Dennis Woos" wrote in message ... (Snip) I had a great night observing with Dan, and felt that I was amply rewarded for not chickening out like my friends! Oh, and a young guy observing with us asked why Dan bothered to make the off-axis mirrors round as opposed to leaving them pie shaped. Good question, no? Dennis An off-axis circular aperture actually has a significantly better point spread function than does a pie-shaped aperture from which it might be cut. Of course the pie-shape does have more collection area if you are only interested in dim, diffuse objects. -- Adam Norton Norton Engineered Optics Optical design and systems engineering for Silicon Valley and beyond. http://home.ix.netcom.com/~anorton/ (Remove antispam feature before replying) |
#7
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Stellafane posts, anyone?
"Gil" wrote ... Anyone hear anything about the conference this year? Couldn't make it due to a previous committment... Gil, The attendance was down, as was the number of scopes entered into the judging. However there were some fine scopes entered. The one that I really noticed (as did the judges) was a giant binocular chair/mount that the observer rides on. The optics were two 6-inch Newts. People who observed with it said that the views were wonderful. After a late afternoon rain on Friday (about an hour) the skies cleared beautifully. A friend and I set up our two Obsession 20's a few feet apart in the camping field north of the food tent. A group of us used the two scopes all night with different objects in each. It's really fun to switch back and forth between two big scopes that are always on different objects. I used my scope to mostly work the southern sky. That's an area that is difficult for me to observe from home - and I didn't have to use my ladder much! After around 3:00am I saw a number of Delta Aq meteors while hunting galaxy clusters in the same constellation. On Saturday it was clear early and I did some solar observing with my PST. Later on it clouded up and threatened thunderstorms. However, it never hit the area and some friends and I used a little 6-inch Dob to hunt down bright stuff in the sucker holes. I never got to the swap tables, but some friends got some good buys there. The new building is great! It's much better than the old tent. Because of a forecast for bad storms on Saturday they held the main program in the new barn. The side doors can very quickly be opened or closed. It still needs a floor. The main program speaker was very good to someone like me interested in the history of ATM'ing and Stellafane. Sunday was a beautifully sunny morning to clean up, have breakfast, and head over to the Hartness House. The one downside there was that the owners of Hartness House want the STM's to start paying for heat and light for the ATM Museum there. I hope that it's not the start of the end for it. As for the low attendance: It may have been the gas prices, the poor weather forecast (which was wrong!!), or the time of the year, i.e., July rather than August. I usually camp the Thursday night before in Ascutney State Park, and it is always nearly filled with Stellafaners or others. However, for the first time in the 10 years I've done this the park was nearly empty! There was only one or two other campsites occupied, and the ranger said that several people with paid reservations never showed! Bottom line: 2006 was yet another great Stellafane, including one night of beautifully clear and dark skies that let me find a number of new objects with my 20-inch. At one point I had 4 galaxies in the eyepiece field of my 26mm Nagler and there were two others just outside the field. George Normandin |
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