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Tag Archives: Spruce Knob

A Weekend at Almost Heaven

06 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by gfbrandenburg in astronomy, Optics, science, Telescope Making, Uncategorized

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Almost Heaven Star Party, binocular mount, dobsonian, NOVAC, Spruce Knob, star party

I spent Labor Day weekend at the Almost Heaven Star Party very close to Spruce Knob, the highest ridge in West Virginia. When the skies cleared at night, the stars and Milky Way were magnificent, but that only happened about 1 night out of three. My 12.5″ home-made Dobsonian telescope performed very well; in fact, because its primary and secondary mirror are almost fully enclosed by the light shrouds and upper cage, I was able to keep observing long after all the other refractors and Schmidt-Cassegrains were closed down by the heavy dew. (To keep the dew off of my finder scope and Telrad, I used large rubber bands to wrap chemical hand warmer packs around them, and that crude and cheap arrangement worked very well!)

Here are three photos taken by me:

Exploring the geology of Spruce Knob Mountain Center: Lyle Mars in blue shirt and white hat is in front of the entrance to a cave carved in limestone
Exploring the geology of Spruce Knob Mountain Center: Lyle Mars in blue shirt and white hat is in front of the entrance to a cave carved in limestone
Selfie with me in front of three others on the geology hike
Selfie with me in front of three others on the geology hike
This lovely sunset did not portend clear skies
This lovely sunset did not portend clear skies

All but the photo with the sextant were taken by Oscar.

Alan Goldberg teaching someone how to use a sextant
Alan Goldberg teaching someone how to use a sextant
Me studying my charts, in front of parallelogram binocular mount
Me studying my charts, in front of parallelogram binocular mount
Oscar Olmedo and me at our campsite
Oscar Olmedo and me at our campsite
Mike Laugherty and me
Mike Laugherty and me
Mike Laugherty and me
Mike Laugherty and me
Me fiddling with my 12.5" home-made dob in the daytime
Me fiddling with my 12.5″ home-made dob in the daytime
Me fiddling with the parallelogram binocular mount in the daytime
Me fiddling with the parallelogram binocular mount in the daytime
Mike Laugherty and me fiddling with binocular mount
Mike Laugherty and me fiddling with binocular mount
Left to right: Mike Laugherty, Oscar Olmedo, me
Left to right: Mike Laugherty, Oscar Olmedo, me
The lottery drawing for a whole bunch of neat prizes. None of us 3 won anything.
The lottery drawing for a whole bunch of neat prizes. None of us 3 won anything.

A Talk at AHSP on Telescope Making

16 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by gfbrandenburg in astronomy, History, Telescope Making

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AHSP, Almost Heaven Star Party, Charles Messier, Messier Objects, NOVAC, Spruce Knob, West Virginia

Two weeks ago was the Almost Heaven Star Party on the slopes of Spruce Knob, West Virginia, sponsored and organized by the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (NOVAC). The weather was wonderful, and we could see the Milky Way and lots of Messier objects with our naked eyes, every single night for four nights. This is by far the longest stretch of good weather I’ve ever experienced up there at The Mountain Institute.

(Friday and Saturday, it was only clear for a few hours, but Sunday and Monday nights were clear all night, AND there was NO DEW to speak of!! Wow!!)

During the daytime, there were lots of talks and also activities and expeditions such as hiking, spelunking, visiting the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, canoeing, and Phun With Physics and arts & crafts for kids. I particularly enjoyed the talks on Russell Porter (the founder of amateur telescope making in the US and one of the major designers of the 200-inch telescope at Palomar), LIGO (detection of gravity waves), and Rod Molisse’s talk on 50 years of mostly-commercial telescopes as seen in the pages of various astronomy regime.

I was one of the speakers and gave a little talk on telescope-making. If you care to sit through it, you can find it along with all of the other talks (many of which I missed for various reasons) at this web-page.

I brought my home-made 12.5″ Dob-Newt [shown to the left in the picture below] and added about a dozen items to my formal list of Messier objects. (I had already seen all 100+ objects, but hadn’t recorded enough details on them to be able to earn one of the ‘merit badge’ pins from the Astronomical League, so I’m going through the list again

.img_0198

(If you didn’t know: Charles Messier loved hunting comets about 220 years ago, with what we would consider today to be a fairly small (4″ diameter) refractor that he used from downtown Paris, not far from where I lived back in 1959. Comets look like fuzzy patches in the sky, and so do galaxies, star clusters, and illuminated clouds of gas, all of which are MUCH farther away and MUCH larger. Comets are part of our own solar system, and move noticeably from one night to the next against the apparently fixed background of stars. Messier is credited with discovering 13 comets. But when he discovered a fuzzy item in the sky that did NOT move, he would record its location and its appearance, so as to avoid looking at it again. He published and updated this list a few times before he died, 199 years ago. Nowadays, his list of things-to-be-avoided are some of the most amazing and beautiful things you can see in the night sky. I’ve tried imaging a few of them, but am very, very far from being proficient at it. I attach my best one so far, of something called the Dumbbell Nebula. No, it’s not named after me. And thanks to Mike Laugherty for helping with the color balance!)

dumbbell-processed-november-1-2015

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