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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Fair Weather Scope time
Last minute get up and go

28 March 2012

I have been monitoring the weather forecasts for a decent night to enjoy the Lunar, Venus & Jupiter conjunction, debating between Wednesday or Thursday for some scope time. Wednesday seems...to be the best out of the two. With tonight being the warmest and less cloudy.

So...

I will set up a telescope at the primary Chicago Astronomer observation site just south of the Adler Planetarium building at 7:00pm.

If it's just me, it's cool as any scope time is a good time.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

A nice easy intimate session -

I had the choice to work a scope this evening or the next...and I am glad I did this one as I met a lot a cool and fun people.

I arrived on-scene at 7:00pm and as soon as I placed the OTA on the mount, I get the curious magnetically attracted and drawn to my site...

The temps were cool and crisp..a great early spring night. No clouds, all I had on was a hoodie, which was enough for me for the evening. To start off, we had Jupiter, Venus and the crescent Moon to share...

Starting down low on the ecliptic, Jupiter was low and ill defined, with much detail now lost, but even so, the little 90mm refractor picks up the four satellites...

In the main scope, bands are still discernible and we even caught the GRS in our line of sight.

Heading up the ecliptic....

Venus is displaying a nice "Half Planet" presently and great in discussing the quirks of inner orbit mechanics.

The Moon is always an impressive object regardless of phase, but I like this time of the Moon's phase and in twilight...

I use both the 90mm and main scope - and have my visitors go from the wide angle 90mm to the the tighter-higher magnified views of the 40mm 2" eyepiece in the C11.

Nice Earth-shine...


An early visitor asked about the Orion Nebula and that is it true that we can only see it now, due to solar flares. Well, no...

Showing them M42 thru the 90mm piggy backed refractor, I explain that it's a regular winter object, easily visible to the unaided eye. Picking it up in the main scope, my visitors are thrilled even more in catching the delicate tendrills of the nebula...

...and the birthplace of stars.

I wasn't polar aligned and had some drift going on...but good enough for a public session.

We had a fun group of young people who stopped by and were enthralled with the chance of peering thru the largest public mobile free telescope in the city...

We had long discussions on astronomy, cosmology, ancient astronauts, the Venus Transit - and the Android tablet came in use beautifully in assisting my mini-lectures...

We also discussed optics, time travel, why Pluto got demoted and life on Mars....

Cars would pull up and double park along the curve, people jump out and ask to grab a quick peek...

We also picked out Mars, Double stars, clusters and did the circuit through-out the session.

I like to use Sirius and Betelgeuse as a lesson on stellar age...

...and Sirius always shines like a diamond.

We also had two gentlemen from England who stopped by and said we made their trip to Chicago memorable...

Tomorrow, the Vice-President of the United States is arriving in Chicago for a fund raiser and we catch two military helicopters that buzzed the area in prep...

C.A Support Crew member Maria was on-hand for this session and took most of the pics. Here, I show her her first view of Saturn in the C11...

She thinks Saturn is beautiful...

Saturn, getting higher each night earlier, was still in the muck, but I took some quick shots...

She will make a great telescopic target for our 2012 observation season.

I closed up shop at 10:00 pm and it was getting chilly after three hours. It developed into a very nice night with new Chicago Astronomer fans...

A total of 35 visitors were attended to for this session. I may do the next one this weekend - pending on time and weather.

Stay tuned.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Here are nice emails from new Chicago Astronomer fans....

It was an honest pleasure to have met you today.

The infinite space never ceases to interest me. I look forward to future events.

Please feel free to notify me of events to come. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.

Moon J

Hi Joe,


I recently met you at Adler's and you showed my friends and I a few planets and stars.

Hope you keep us, or at least me, updated on anything else like that!

Thank you so much. Felt like a blessing to be able to see things like that.

We really had so much fun. Feel free to put me on your mailing list!

Thanks,

Liezel P

Hey Joe,

It was great meeting you last night in front of the Planetarium.

Thanks a ton for showing me parts of the cosmos I've never noticed before and for answering all my questions on time travel and everything else I threw at you.

Please let me know whenever you'll be back to watch the sky, would love to talk some more!

Cheers and best regards,

Konrad K

[magic612]

Great session Joe! I hope to make one again soon, though from my location, it's easier on the weekend nights.