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| 2001 Great Plains Star Party |
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Day 1
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Clouds, clouds, clouds! Nothing but clouds!
Nevertheless, Wolfy and I headed south October 10 for this year's Great Plains Star Party.
This year, I dispensed with the wind turbine and parked close to the power line so I could be sure to keep my batteries charged. (No sun, remember?) |
| Just about the first thing I did after setting up was wander across the compound and introduce myself to Bob Bona from Atchison, KS, who had turned up with his 12 inch Meade LX200 scope and his cool Rialta. (Bob was kind enough to give a tour of his RV to Jean when she arrived on Thursday to drop off grandson Alex.) |
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Not much hope of seeing anything tonight under these skies, but I set up my LX90 nonetheless. The star party had actually begun a day earlier, on Tuesday, but the weather being what it was, I waited until Wednesday after getting a "partly cloudy" report from the weather bureau.
I did get about an hour total of very unstable viewing between midnight and 2 am. Spent most of the time gawking at Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon. Too many clouds to do much else. |
A spartan lunch to take the edge off my hunger. You can't observe on an empty stomach, you know. |
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The "usual suspects" -- with someone flying a kite.
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My neighbor was Gil Machin, long time amateur astronomer from Kansas City. Here he strikes his "usual" pose, leaning against his homemade 13 1/2 inch scope and his entirely homemade equatorial mount. The mount is so solid, I think you could use it to hoist the engine out of a '50 Buick!
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I ran into several folks who said they had ordered LX90s similar to mine but had not received them in time to bring them to the party. Then I met Harlan Seyfer and his wife from Nebraska. Good to run into another LX90 user! Harlan and his wife are recently returned from Beijing, China, where they lived and worked for nearly 9 years. Welcome back to the land of the big TV, folks. |
Wednesday night, our hosts treated us to a barbeque of Italian sausage with a delicious onion-pepper sauce. Everyone cleaned his plate -- two or three times! |
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