Thought you might enjoy a little report from the other group in the
valley.

Jim Balow's article in the Gazette really did the trick and a TV
appearance by Curt Spivey from the Clay Center's Avampato Science
Museum and Electric Sky Theater must have helped also. We had a
great turnout of both members and public.

Members brought scopes and the public brought lots of questions and
interest. Rodney Waugh was the first to arrive and was setting up
both his Meade 10" SCT and his Astro Physics Traveler on the Meade
LXD55 goto mount. I was next with my C-8 and then the flood started.
Ron Cockeram brought out his venerable old Meade 8" Schmidt
Newtonian, Curt Spivey brought the museum's 10" Meade he has dubbed
the Rainmaker. Bob Frostick had brought his 8" LX200 but opted to
run the club's 12" LX200 when he saw how many scopes were there.

Ed Conners showed up with his homebuilt binoculars. If you haven't
seen these and would like, I can post pictures later. Why? His
binoculars are twin F15 6" refractors that if they weren't white
would look more like a twin 5" gun mount on a navy ship.

I quite frankly don't know how many people showed up but Rodney ran
the Mars slides he had purchased and gave a short talk on Mars to
more than 50 people and that was before it really started to get
dark. After sunset, people continued to arrive. We had asked in the
paper that visitors park down by the camp cafeteria and walk up but
it discouraged very few. People continued to arrive until 10:30.
Those late arrivals kept us at the scopes until after midnight when
the dew and fog pretty much shut us down. But we had good crowds
until well past 11:00.

The line to the 12" extended out of the observatory for most of the
night and Curt and Rodney's 10's also had lines. It goes without
saying that the big binoculars garnered a lot of attention although
he did not aim that thing at Mars until very late. Ed really likes
M13 and the Double Cluster to show off his equipment. People still
wanted to look through that monster.

I can't explain what was happening at my scope, I never seemed to
have a line as such but I had several who just hung around, wanted
to talk about the scope and why mine looked as good or better than
the bigger scopes. I tried to explain that I was just a much better
astronomer than the rest but I think they preferred to believe my
explanation regarding fine tuning the scope and using the Orange
filter. We were getting great detail on the visible ice cap, I don't
know which one it was but think it was the Southern Ice Cap. While
it may have been imagination, the idea that we were actually seeing
some detail in the Central Plains region was shared by many. The
atmosphere, I think, was causing the view to sort of pop in and out.
We were still looking through a lot of atmosphere even as midnight
approached. I also think at about this time I was starting to get
dew on my eyepiece, the 12.5mm by the way, and when I got out my
little hair dryer I found my venerable jump start battery about
dead. First time I've ever managed to run it down that far, but it
is nearly five years old.

I didn't get a chance until very late to look through any of the
other scopes and never did get to the 12". But I think my 8" did
quite nicely against the competition. I do know this, the telescope
held up a lot better than Betty and I did. When we got home about
1:00 am, we both had trouble just getting out of the Jimmy. But it
was one hell of a night for astronomy. Great skies, moderate
temperatures, and a good warmup for Blackwater Falls Astronomy
Weekend.

I'll try to post a few pix from the party after while, I think you
might enjoy seeing Ed's binoculars.

Hope you all had as good of a time as we did,
Bill