Astronomy for Everyone

We got up bright and early on Sunday morning and headed into Big Pine Key and the Crack'd Egg for breakfast. When we got back to Camp Wesumkee, we went out to the berm and assembled the 3 telescopes we brought. Jerry Lowrey had followed us in his truck with his 18" Starmaster. We got Jerry's scope up but discovered that the RS-232 jack on his black box was broken, so Jerry shoved a piece of a toothpick into the plug with the jack so that it would make contact. Astronomers are nothing if not inventive. We also got Kent's 12.5" Starmaster (my old scope) up and collimated, and then helped Dave finish off with his 18" StarStructure. We covered the scopes and waited for it to get dark by visiting with other club members and friends we hadn't seen since WSP last year. Preston and Liz Starr had come out all the way from Texas. I hadn't seen them since WSP 2007 so Liz and I had a lot of catching up to do. We made do with what Dave call's "pig food" for dinner. Each of us had brought food in cans, like Chef Boyardee, canned spinach, canned fruit, you name it, and ate it straight out of the can. I had brought an entire case of Coke on ice and Kent and I had already gone through several cans by the time it got dark. We took our eyepiece cases out to the berm and started alignments, only to discover that Jerry's Telrad was dead and without an alignment, he couldn't get his drive system working. Kent's scope had no drive so he and I had a ball looking for things the old-fashioned way. The seeing wasn't great and the transparency could have been better but it was clear. Later on, at about 11:00 p.m. we got Eta Carinae, NGC 3275, in Kent's scope. It wasn't the best view because there was light cloud cover over the ocean in the deep south, but we got it with no problem. Kent and I went through several objects, while Dave and Jerry fussed with drive systems. We hit the rack at about 2:00 a.m. after views of the Coal Sack and the Jewel Box in Crux. Great night!