Our biggest mini star party of the year was this morning.
We arrived last night to set up for it.

After some coaxing, Don arrived way early to unlock the gate and let me in. I wanted to be all set up before sunset. I watched the sunset, big and red, with a touch of pastel oranges and purples in the high clouds to the west, and realized that M74 and M77 were not going to be there by the time i got the scope set up and the clouds cleared.

Well, after installing 2 new silver handles on the GWS so i can pick it up and put it on the EQP, the sun was down. The process of collimation of the primary and alignment of the finder with the main scope took another 15 minutes… That was the good news. The bad news was that the clouds, predicted by the CSC (but not the American simulations) really did persist. Those of our number willing to set up scopes in advance did so, and we waited for the clouds to clear, after seeing a nice sunset.

It was about 10 PM before the clouds parted, but that did not stop us from having hours of conversation, some even about astronomy(!).

The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) was reading about 18.4 in the darkest direction of the sky, and 17.8 towards Hamilton, which is not much better than a night with a half moon, but that’s because of all the high clouds. Kerry called home to get Bill to clear the skies, and he reported the clouds would be gone a few minutes after 10 but he was ‘doing everything he could’ from there.

I could see Saturn and Mars glowing right through the clouds, and decided to swing the GWS in their direction. After a few seconds I was able to announce that Saturn is in the GWS, and conversations and cookie eating contests were suspended while everyone got pretty fine views of Saturn. Jim and Don also pointed at Saturn. The high clouds made it a bit dimmer, which was good, but still nice and sharp.

Near 10 PM, some of the regulars decided to pack up and head home. We bid them a safe trip but also reminded them of the impending great skies.

This was the night for me to get the XTi to do some imaging through the GWS, along with a Barlow. Mars was so bright that I had to use 1/10 second exposures! It was not long before my card was full. Thanks Kerry for helping me to get it focused.

I also got some excellent shots of Saturn, and will be combining them with DSS soon.
Don imaged a litany of DSOs. Then dewed up. He deployed his backup scope, and continued to image. Jim also dewed over, and discovered a connection failure on his dew shield (the power cord was not pushed into the socket all the way). Luckily several other dew-free scopes remained available. It was about -2C, and there was frost on my car.

Jackie’s mission of viewing the Antenna Galaxy in Corvus paid off at last. We used star charts to point the GWS, and Kerry used GOTO to point her scope. The result was something that for a fleeting second actually looked to me like a stylized W with a loop in the center. I hope the photos bear that out. (not, see below)

We could see Vega, and Deneb, and M57 looked fine, as did the double double, which Kerry was able to see. On closer examination I had to admit the stars were elongated, but i was not seeing pairs.

By the time we left, the SQM was reading about 20.2, in the direction of Corvus, which is pretty good for Binbrook.

We packed up a bit after 2:30, after spending as much time as possible hunting DSOs against looming fatigue. 3 of us headed for TH, to discover that once again, all the donuts were in the trash bin. Oh well, the drinks were good, and i was still full of excellent cookies, and hot chocolate from the park.

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Update and Photos By Kerry:

What a night and such an incredible turn out. Practically the entire gang showed up. It was a little worrisome in the beginning because it didn’t look like the clouds would clear out nicely… but thankfully it got dramatically better after 10pm and after midnight the entire sky was almost cloud free.

Icy waters of Binbrook at night:

The Gang:

and Dave in the distance with his brand new C8-SGT:

We got a real treat near the end of the night/early in the morning, thanks to Jackie’s obsession with this antenna galaxy. We finally found it in the GWS and could almost make out structure. While we were enjoying the views I dialed it up in Carte du Ciel on my laptop and started imaging it. What an interesting looking pair of interacting galaxies. It was really low in the south and there is a lot more interesting structure that could have been picked up with more exposure time.

I couldn’t believe I stayed out so late. I also imaged M81… I’ll get to processing that later. We also watched the summer triangle and Scorpius rise and got a sneak preview of a few late spring/summer targets.

Update by Tim Harpur
Well, it was a nice turnout despite the uninvited clouds. I didn’t manage to get any astro-photos so I took the opportunity to take some “standard” photos instead.