Last night a few HAA members gathered at Binrook for a night of observing. Clouds refused to go away completely, and so only the brightest objects could be spotted through the high haze. Even so, Jim, Joe, Gord and I enjoyed the line-up of Moon and planets in the west. One of the BCA park workers, his friend and his brother all joined us for some telescopic views, and Jim did what he does so well, and made an excellent host by giving a good sky tour and providing them with many fine views through his telescope. After these visitors left, the four of us compared views through our four ‘scopes, and enjoyed views from the most common of objects, like Mizar, to our best shot at some nebulae. There was both a large and a small catadioptric (Jim’s 8″ Schmidt-Cass, and Joe’s 5″ Mak), and a large and a small refractor there (Gord’s 6″ refractor (Big, wow!) and my small but mighty 90mm refractor). Seems we needed a couple of Dob owners to round things out!
Below, you can see the view of the Moon and Venus doing their best to shine through the cloud, although you can also see that they took on quite a yellowish cast due to the heavy atmosphere. Contrast was very low, and no earthshine could be seen at all.
Even under these less than stellar conditions (sorry for the pun) we all had a great time. Next time you get an email saying that there will be oberving in the park, why not join us?
