The RAC had a great group at Eagle Bluff last night. We had:
Me with my Celestron G8 and 15X70 binoculars
Jeff and Gerrada Newland with their 8" Dobsonian
Jerome and Jillissa Taubel with their 11" Celestron SCT
Luka Bajzer with his 8" Dobsonian and 22X85 binoculars
Nathan Wentland with is 6" Celestron SCT GOTO
John Preston with his Meade 10" LX200 imaging setup
Brandon Wyman with his 10X50 Bushnell binoculars and
Chris and Julie G. with their 150mm Maksutov Cassegrain
The sky conditions were pretty good. Completely clear overhead and very good seeing. The drawback was the humidity and the dew, but most stayed observing until midnight to 1 a.m. Jerome didn't completely give up until 3 a.m.
We had a fabulous time. Lots of objects to look at and there was a quilting or sewing group down at the Eagle Bluff building and at least 12 of those ladies came up to look through our scopes. Jeff and Gerrarda did a great job of entertaining them and pointing objects out in the sky. We had at least four laser pointers going and even saw the ISS make a pass at 9:12 p.m. Some of the older ladies had trouble looking thru my scope, so I just brought them over to John Preston's setup and they watched him pull images of objects up on his computer. He is very good at imaging even though he hasn't done it very long.
We had several sporadic meteors come through, and after the dew became a problem, several of us stayed up until 3 a.m. watching these. Jillissa Tauble came up with a game called "Stump the Astronomers" where she would use the 11" scopes GOTO and we would have to guess what the object was. That was fun!
Nathan Wentland has one of those nifty little orange Celestron GOTO scopes that you currently see advertised in Astronomy and Sky&Telescope magazines and I'll have to say that I was very impressed. Razor sharp optics. This was the first time I had met Nathan and John and I hope we get to see a lot more of them.
Brandon keeps plugging away on his Binocular Messier and Deep Sky lists and Luka completed his Messier telescopic list last night. Congratulations Luka!
We had a blast. It was a Glorious Night For Astronomy!