September open night

September 22 -- The Stephens Observatory open night went very well. We had 29 visitors, all ages represented, with a good number of them College students. The last little group, two college couples, arrived just before 11 PM closing. Most visitors got to see the Sagittarius Cluster (M22) -- the beautiful globular star cluster of about 70,000 stars -- which resolved into individual stars very handsomely, the Moon, and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) which was a struggle to find with so many people in the room! The Moon is always a big hit with the public: something we see very often but not with the kind of detail we see through a good, big refracting telescope. Our best views came through the big wide-field antique eyepiece (about 40X) but views at 110X through a modern eyepiece were crisp and thrilling. At one point in the evening I think we had around 22 people in the dome -- a 16-foot diameter room -- which may be some sort of record for us! The air was cool, the sky was perfectly clear (for Northeastern Ohio) and the atmosphere fairly steady (some shimmering of crater details visible at higher power).

Clear night, photo experiments

Having missed one night of excellent seeing Saturday night, I decided I must get out this night... the second very good night in a row! Went to Stephens and enjoyed about 2 1/2 hours of excellent skies. I practiced locating and observing the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with the big scope. Viewed the spectacular M22 globular star cluster in Sagittarius, and enjoyed seeing the Milky Way in the dark sky overhead. Attempted to image M31 and M22 through the telescope but it still isn't tracking nearly well enough for photography... not yet, anyway. Did take the camera outdoors and photograph the dome against the night sky and the photos were excellent as first tries! Sensitivity setting of ISO 1600, however, generated a lot of electronic noise amongst the stars. I'll use that rarely in future! One of the clearest skies in a while and I got to enjoy it in comfortable 68-degree conditions. Closed up at midnight. A good night.