The 2011 Astronomy Weekend was another 4-day session, from Thursday
through Sunday. Unfortunately, I couldn't get there until midday
Friday. I
arrived at the lodge around 1:30 on Friday, while Brent Ogle was going over his
handout on the night sky. I wish I had
been there for Rodney Waugh’s talk “A Very Real Doomsday” that morning, but I
didn’t see the program until late Friday morning, and by then it was too late
to get to BWF in time. But he gave me
his handouts, so I know the talk was about the effects on the Earth’s
electrical grid of a large solar flare.
The next talk, “Astronomy 101”, was presented by Steve Mitch, retired
director of the Oglebay Planetarium in Wheeling, WV. He’s a friend of my brother Bill. I’ve heard Bill mention Steve often, but I
had never met him. We chatted several
times Friday and Saturday. Steve’s
talk
was followed by a wonderful presentation by Brent Maynard of Marshall
University on astrophotography using a digital SLR. He likes to
do things as inexpensively as possible and even showed us a homemade
refractor he used for some of his images. I came away inspired to try new
things (more on that later). I ran
into Becky Littleton in the hallway between talks. We missed Becky and her husband Jack at last
year’s Astronomy Weekend. Jack was a
regular contributor to the programs and had been fighting cancer for several
years. Unfortunately, he was very ill
last year and passed away last November. We all miss him, but it was wonderful to see Becky out and about again.
| The weather was dismal for the beginning of this year’s Astronomy
Weekend--cold, rainy, and foggy. I
headed to Blackwater Brewing for dinner and returned to my room to work on the
continuation proposal for a summer program my wife and I run at Frostburg
State University. The official program consisted of
“old” movies in the Conference Center (“Destination Moon” and “Star Wars”). The first of those movies is from 1950 and
qualifies as “old”, but it really makes me feel decrepit to hear “Star Wars”
referred to as “old”... The cloud forecast for Saturday night was quite
promising, so it looked like we could get some observing done then. |
 |
When I got up Saturday morning,
the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. I could see the wind
turbines across the gorge. Things still looked 
good for the evening star party. |
 |
 |
The Saturday
morning session began with a talk on HII regions in the Milky Way by Loren Anderson, a
brand new Physics professor at WVU. He was followed by another WVU faculty member, D.J. Pisano, who
discussed star formation in galaxies. I
skipped out of Brent Ogle’s reprise of the night sky to set up my 80 mm
refractor in front of the lodge to show people an impressive collection of sun
spots that were visible. After I packed
up my stuff, Becky Littleton and I went to Hellbenders Burritos in Davis for
lunch. She discovered that the owner was
someone who had been a student in Jack’s intro astronomy class at WVU. He and his wife had become good friends with
Jack and Becky, but they had all lost touch with each other. Becky was very happy to meet them again. |
 |
We
returned to the Lodge for an update on the Morgan County Observatory by Kevin Boles. (I remember Kevin’s first presentation on the observatory 10 years ago!) He was
followed by a presentation on intergalactic stars by Pat Burrell from
Youngstown State University. Then came
one of the high points of every Astronomy Weekend--the raffle drawings. Alas, I won nothing this year. I was hoping to go away with two nights in a
cabin at BWF, an iPad, or the 102 mm refractor that Becky donated in Jack’s memory. (Jack had won the telescope a few years
earlier.) Alas, I didn't win anything. After the raffle, I made a
quick drive to Thomas to get a growler filled at Mountain State Brewing. I returned to my room, ate the second half of
my lunchtime burrito (they are BIG!), and then Becky and I headed to the Nature
Center to set up for the evening star party.
The sky had become a little cloudy, but it was clearing. Things looked very promising.
|
 |
| On the way to the Nature Center, I saw a bright sun dog.
It was already fading by the time I got parked and grabbed my
camera, but I did manage to get a decent image of it. |
 |
 |
Even
though I didn’t win the 102 mm refractor, Becky presented me with something
even more special: Jack’s first "big" telescope--a Celestar 8 Computerized. The Celestar appears to be the successor to my
Ultima 8 PEC, and Jack's was outfitted with extras like a dec motor and digital setting circles. As I was setting it up, I
had wonderful memories of my Ultima 8 alongside Jack’s 11 inch Celestron at
earlier Astronomy Weekends. |
 |
| Steve Vincent, president of my home club (the Cumberland
Astronomy Club) started setting up next to me. I showed the
Celestar to him. |
 |
I wandered around and looked at what other
people were setting up. A couple of guys were just going to take
pictures and had only brought cameras (including Pat Burrell, who was
going to try some whole-sky images with a fisheye lens).
I had
brought along an Orion Skyshoot IV planetary imaging camera and was going to
take pictures of Jupiter. The sky had
cleared up nicely, and I was looking forward to some good imaging. Unfortunately, it was very cold and the air
was still damp from the previous days' rain.. Neither Becky nor I had not brought along a dew cap, so the corrector plate
dewed up as darkness fell and I had not brought my 12 V hair
dryer to blow the dew off. Several
visitors enjoyed the sight of Jupiter
through the scope, but I didn't get any images. But I was able to
see Comet Garradd and the M101 supernova
through Steve Vincent’s telescope. I also managed to record
a half hour's worth of images to make a time-lapse movie of stars
rotating around Polaris, something I was motivated to try as a result
of Brent Maynard's talk Friday afternoon. (I had programmed the
remote shutter for my Canon 40D to take a 10 sec exposure every 30 seconds for an hour, but I
forgot to change the battery in the camera and it died after 30
minutes.) Click here to play a Quicktime version of the movie. You can also download the movie in wmv format (340 kB) or mpg format
(2.4 MB). Besides watching the Big Dipper set, you'll see some
clouds, some airplanes, and the lights from some cars as
they drive through the parking lot. By a little after 9 PM, the
Celestar was actually covered with frost. After looking through a
few more scopes, I packed up and headed back to the lodge. (The
temperature display in the car said 33 F!)
After I got back to Frostburg, I was finally
able to try photography with Jack's Celestar. Here are pictures
of Jupiter and M57 taken from my back yard. The Jupiter image is
from a video I made with the Starshoot III camera. The Ring
Nebula image was made with my Canon 40D using Brent Maynard's technique
of stacking a large number of short exposures.
 |
 |
Sunday morning was bright and frosty. But
as I was eating breakfast I actually saw a robin hopping around outside
the dining room! I walked down to Elekala Falls and found that
the footbridge over the falls was slippery with frost. I got a
shot of the only tree around that still showed some color, and hunted
for the robin. (No luck there.) Packing the car was a bit
of a challenge because in addition to
what I had brought I now had to fit the Celestar in. Becky
stopped by to say 'so long' and wondered if I was going to get
everything in. But I finally managed to do it and still have
a view out the back in the rear view mirror. Then I headed
off to look at the new cabins that had been built near the Nature
Center and visit the falls. (I prefer the rustic charm and wooded
surroundings of the old cabins...)
The falls were spectacular this year because of
the several days of rain before Astronomy Weekend. By standing in just the
right spot at the edge of the overlook, I could see a rainbow in the spray.
After photographing that, I headed off to Mountain Made in Thomas
to get some souvenir earrings for Hang and Makea. Then it was
home to Frostburg. I'm looking forward to next year.
