Black River Astronomical Society
Impromptu Star Party
I'd like to thank John R for inviting us all out to last night's impromptu Star Party. The skies were fabulous.
The milky way and even the dark rift were easily visible. The sky was steady and seeing was superb.
In addition to John & I, Tim H, Lee L, Dave G and Randy B showed up, and we thoroughly enjoyed the frigid
November skies until even the bravest of us finally gave in to the cold and called it a night at about 11pm.
Comet Swan looked very nice in John's 10". Working together, we opened up the Nielson Observatory,
set up a digital camera (Canon 30D w/75-300mm lens) on the 14" Celestron and captured the following
image of this little emerald jewel minutes before it sunk into the side of the building and oblivion..........
Here's a blowup of the Comet. We were all surprised at the large apparent size and brightness of the
comet. It was a bright emerald green and appeared somewhat oblong and rectangular in shape.
This image of the Pleiades is a compilation of 21 images we captured with Dave G's Canon 30D
piggybacked on the C-14.
This is a compilation of 9 images of our closest galactic nieghbor, M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.
M32 and M110 also turned out nicely in this image. We used the same camera and setup.
At about 10pm a thick blanket of fog moved through but quickly dissipated. When we started to
pack up we noticed that all our equipment, optics, vehicles, etc; were coated in a thin layer of ice.
Maybe that's why the fog didn't hang around. It was just too doggone cold!