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JUICE – JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer:
Live from the Moon flyby now 8/19 from 4:30 PM to 5:20 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoodtR-46MsI’m at root river park rn a little bit of clouds right now but according to a app I got in about 1-1.5 hour it should hopefully clear up
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It’s looking good for Wednesday night. I’m thinking about taking Thursday morning off so I can stay up late and observe.
Anybody care to join me at Root River Park… or somewhere else?
Duane
PS. I’m going to start a new thread and place this there too. 175 pages of posts is probably enough. 🙂
Duane, I’m planning on coming to the park Wednesday night to turn off the lights for the night. Josef
OK, I see we should continue in topic 2024-observing.
Outreach at Frontenac State Park last night (8/31) was outstanding. Large crowd of old and young, clear dark skies and great presentation and discussions by club members. Frontenac has fairly good horizons except to the east where tree tops block view a bit. A zenith dark sky recording appears below. Max readings (MPSAS = 21.07 and NELM = 6.15) are comparable to those at Eagle Bluff.
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Dodge Center outreach event of 9-5-2024 was sparsely attended (mainly by club members and Ingvild Herfindahl the library director). Ingvild did her best to get the North Park lighting turned off but Excel Energy did not respond to her request. We had a good discussion during the presentation portion (about Orion-Meade departure from commercial Astronomy, light pollution maps and dark sky locations in MN, initial planning for future presentations and discussion of tech advances in telescopes/mounts).
The sky was clear and Josef was able to view many unique stars, star clusters, nebulae and Saturn.
I recorded the sky darkness at our observing site and the data appears in the plot below. The Mag./arc-sec2 was 19.79 corresponding to a Naked eye limiting magnitude of 5.35. Of interest is a reading taken in Dodge Center in 2015 of 20.34 mag./arc-sec2). While worsening of light pollution is possible, results cannot be definitively compared as the location in Dodge Center and the meter used in 2015 is unknown.Here is interesting reading, if applied it could help to limit light pollution.
Standards for state-funded outdoor lighting fixtures.
(a) An outdoor lighting fixture may be installed or replaced using state funds only if:(1) the new or replacement outdoor lighting fixture is a cutoff luminaire if the rated output of the outdoor lighting fixture is greater than 1,800 lumens;
See full text at 2023 Minnesota Statutes – 16B.328 OUTDOOR LIGHTING FIXTURES MODEL ORDINANCE
Anybody observing this weekend? I’m happy to go to Eagle Bluff if available or Root River.  🙂
Last weekend I hit Root River, packed up hastily, got there after dark but it is so great to be able to turn the light on/off. But, I packed up rather quick and forgot my light shroud. 😮   I found a vikings blanket that we won at a Honker’s game in the back of my car. It was the perfect width but a little long. I pinched it into the truss bolts and then found a roll of electrical tape in my astronomy stuff. I wrapped that around tight on the top and bottom and made it work! Without it I would have had contrast problems but the real issue would have been dew. I had no dew all night.
I bagged five Herschel 400 objects (completed Pegasus and Cassiopeia), got pics of T Cor Bor, which better blow up soon or wait until next go-round, and took 95 images at 25 seconds of Andromeda Galaxy with darks and biases… and that didn’t turn out. Apparently I need way longer exposures. I was taking them with the Sky Adventurer and Canon R50… I forget what focal length. Somewhere between 200-300. Disappointing that I haven’t figured out what my Canon needs to bag that galaxy.
I’m up for observing on Friday or Saturday (maybe both if the family won’t complain) and I plan on getting there before dark this time (for real), and remembering to bring everything.
In about 10 days it will be perfect to see comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I pray we have good weather for it. I really want to get some shots of it. I heard our temporary moon will be sticking around until November but it’s mag 27 or something like that so maybe Randy can pull it in with his light cask for us. 🙂
Orionids are tending with a Full Moon this year… not too excited about that.
And remember… there are no politics in the cosmos! So, keep looking up! 🙂
If anybody wants to observe, I can’t do Friday; but I’ll be out on Saturday if anybody wants to join me.
I pray it’s clear!
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