BBAA Skywatch – 09/03/2010
Date: 09/03/2010
Time: 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM EDT
Scope: Celestron C8-SGT
Mount: Celestron Advance CG5 GOTO
Eyepieces: APM 26mm SWA, 16mm Nagler
Location: Northwest River Park, Chesapeake, VA
Weather: Warm, VERY humid
Transparency: 7 Seeing: 6
Alignment Stars: Arcturus, Vega
Luck for us Hurricane Earl ended up just brushing by and the rain and wind stopped in the early afternoon on Friday. The sky cleared just in time for the BBAA Skywatch at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake. There were four scopes set up, on big Dob, a 6″ (??) refractor, a smaller reflector, and I had my 8″ SCT.
There were a ton of cub scouts out there and this made getting things set up a bit frustrating. It is cool, they were all just very excited to look through the scopes and that is really what we are out there for. The humidity was very high and dew heaters on all the scopes were working over time. The dew got to the small reflector pretty quick which left only 3 scopes and a bunch of anxious cub scouts. Several of the scouts asked some really great questions and I think they had a pretty good time looking through scopes.
This was my first time with my 8″ scope in the field. It took me several attempts to get it aligned but once it was it was dead on for the entire night. My DIY field power supply did great. It is powered by a 12 volt 105 amp hour marine deep cycle battery and it had no problem powering the mount and dew heater for the time we were set up.
I did not keep a very detailed log, just a list of objects. M27, M22, M11, M17, M15, M10, and M12. Jupiter rose above the trees about 10:00 or so and looked great.
One object that I did get a pretty good view of was M71. So far every time I have attempted this one in my backyard the light pollution (or moon light) has made it impossible to find. With the clear dark sky I was able to find M71 and it looked great. In the 8″ scope, M71 appeared as a tight faint cluster of stars, it was hard to resolve any individual members.
All in all it was a great Skywatch and I am already looking forward to the next one scheduled for Friday, October 1, 2010.
