Wow gang!

What a great night to be with Chicago Astronomers. I was overwhelmed that Paulie, Hillary (both from Valpo), and Joe (Pilsen), at much distance and inconvenience, packed up their scopes and headed way north, and only far north, respectively, to help out with my hastily arranged star party for the neighborhood.

The astro forecasts had been aces for this weeknight for the previous two days, and so it looked like it would be an outstanding night to check out the cosmos before a week of meteorological dodginess. I fired off the note to the neighborhood email tree, and because of the lateness, and the fact that it was a school night, set my expectations for attendance low. Boy was I wrong!

Joe's pictures are great, but I am kicking myself for not taking one about an hour earlier when the park was completely packed with parents, kids and dogs out enjoying the evening, each other, and the stars. There must have been at least fifteen enthusiastic kids there at one point, all as well behaved as anyone could hope.

The earliest were there to catch the fast setting crescent moon and the flyover of the International Space Station, that made a big, beautiful, bright arc over our heads at 17222 MPH, traveling the width of the sky from northwest to southeast while we all watched in awe. Paulie even managed to get his dob on it by manually tracking through his finder. I managed a quick peek through the eyepiece and saw the very clear outline of the solar panels before giving somebody else a try. Seeing that thing never gets old!

Because I had to move my scope four times, I struggled with alignment issues, including many ALIGNMENT FAILURE messages that I still don't understand. GoTo is great, except when it doesn't work, and what a horrible night for that problem to bite me in the butt! Even with that, a big group of kids stood patiently and entertained me with questions, answers, and stories, while we all expressed our frustration with my technological ineptitude. Way more fun than being crabby by yourself! Thankfully, Paulie's dob doesn't suffer from technological issues and he and Hillary were all over the place finding stuff. Eventually Joe showed up, and his large magnifier was a source of wonder for everybody as he got to work setting up. I was very thankful that they were all there!! Thanks gang!!

Jupiter was still stuck down in the trees, and the kids had requested to see the galaxy I promised in the email, so I finally got Andromeda to show up in the eyepiece. What none of us expected was the early wave of high, thin haze that started to move in, making faint fuzzies almost impossible, and even stuff like the mighty and bright Jupiter seem to be wearing an alpaca sweater. Booo!!!! Where did this come from?!?

Nonetheless, I did manage to corral the giant spiral in the center of my eyepiece and get the scope to track. I've never seen it so faint, even in the city. Probably 25 people got a peek at it, with only one or two not able to convince themselves that they'd seen it. I was very happy to have the SkyVoyager iPhone picture of it and others, to show everybody what they were seeing. We'll do better next time, gang!

After everybody had a crack at it, I slewed over to Jupiter, and we all had a peek at it in my scope so everybody could compare between mine, Joe's, and Paulie's. Even though high magnification was impossible, and the seeing was just terrible, that was still a bunch of fun for everybody. It's not every day that we all get to see a little mini solar system in front of our own eyes.

Joe and I both tried to track down M57, the Ring Nebula, and because of the haze, we both had ZERO luck. Yuck!

Finally I showed the kids the North Star, Paulie and Joe tracked the Double Cluster, a binary star, Joe the Owl/ET Cluster , and at around 10pm, we suddenly realized that the haze had changed. We were completely socked in by clouds that had absolutely NO BUSINESS BEING HERE! Where did they come from, we wondered? Even after I got home, when I looked at midnight, The Clear Sky Chart cleardarksky.com/c/Chicagokey.html was still dutifully showing outstanding skies, but outside my window was nothing but thick grey. The AccuWeather Astro Forcast for Chicago www.accuweather.com/us/il/chicago/60625/outdoor-astronomy.asp had for days shown Monday night to be a 10 out of 10 for stargazing. Lies! All lies! Lies! Lies! <sigh>

Frustration aside, it was still a great and wonderful night with friends, neighbors, dogs, and new young friends who completely inspired me to do this again as soon as we are able, and hopefully under much better skies. I will promise to be better prepared with my scope and its sometimes magic GoTo capabilities. I would do this again in a heartbeat, and I encouraged all of them and their neighbors to join me at Sunken Gardens or Horner whenever they see me out, and I will be happy to show them whatever is in my scope at the time.

Thanks also to Elizabeth for doing such an amazing job of getting the word out. Were were all positively overwhelmed at the last minute turnout, and thankful that parents gave their kids a little time off from Monday night homework to come and see what we could.

Lastly, anybody who thinks kids these days are all hyperactive beasts that can't sit still, check out Joe's photographs. We had to stand perfectly still longer than sitting for an old daguerreotype www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/dagprocess.htm, and the kids did great. I think it was hardest for me! (Yes, I'm the blurry one!) Great job, compadritos!