Almost Heaven Star Party with Lisa September 3-6, 2016.

Memorable moments:

Lisa’s first camping trip. Parking was in a nearby lot, so the procedure was to drive in, drop off the gear, and remove the vehicle from the tent area. I could see Lisa looking at all of the stuff in a rather panicked manner, so I rushed off to park the Jeep and quickly returned to put here to work. She was fine after the tent (large enough to stand up and walk around in) was up. We were off of the ground in a double cot.

This was Lisa’s first time seeing the Milky Way. It was visible well before before dark. Lisa had noticed it and thought it was passing clouds.

We had never seen so many stars. There were so many that it was difficult to pick out the constellations.

James Stack and I used the Meade LX850 (12″ f/8) for visually observering many many targets over two nights. I was astounded by the amount of M31/Andromeda detail that was visible. This was the first time that I was able to see more than the fuzzy blob of the core at the eyepiece. I had heard that a dark sky would do more than either aperture or focal length to bring a better view to the eyepiece. Although I kinda understood this all along, the concept was forever etched in my mind on this trip.

SKWV is a great venue, and ASHP is definitely a star party that I would like to do again.

© James R. Johnson, 2022.
jim@jrjohnson.et