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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Chicago Astronomers assemble for a mini Star Party
04 March 2010

It's actually clear and in the upper 30's presently...and the three Chicago Astronomers will set up telescopes by the Adler Planetarium this fine evening and shake the winter cob webs off.

We will set up by the south lawn area...

If in the vicinity of the Adler, stop by, say hi, take a pic and peer through our scopes at Mars and star clusters...no Moon or Saturn, they rise later.

Not sure which scope I'll set up....most likely the smaller C5.

Pics later....

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

It was cold.

Not bitterly cold, but uncomfortable.

Setting up just to the west of the Adler I started out with Mars on the C5 scope...which really is not that impressive, but I did observe the Ice cap. Steve targeted The Orion Nebula in his 4" refractor....great optics and pin point stars.

I started to dew up quickly despite the cold temps...and the dew turned to frost over our equipment. I had to use the makeshift dew shield for the C11 on the C5. It was baggy, but served it's purpose. Steve provided the chemical hand warmers, and they helped a lot.

Bill came by shorty, and as the resident locator expert, was picking out targets like star clusters with his 10" reflector. Saturn finally peeked over the Adler around 8:30 and we caught good viewing of the nearly closed ring system and Titan.

With the glare of Soldier Field behind us....we close up shop.

But...it was still much too cold for comfortable viewing this evening and we called it quits at about 9:00 pm....where we proceeded to have a late dinner and cheap laughs.

Spring is almost here, and with it...pleasant nights, albeit sparse targets.

[Paulie pchris00]

Sparse targets for those of us who cannot easily hunt down distant galaxies, but soon we will have 4 planets in our evening sky. True, only Saturn will look nice in a telescope, but seeing that many planets at one time always gets me excited. And Jupiter should be returning as a morning planet soon, if it hasn't already, for the late, late night observers.