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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Joint Chicago Astronomer and the Chicago Park District Star Party  
North Park Village Nature Center

Friday 26th of September 2014

In our next joint session as the Resident Astronomer with the Chicago Park District will be on Chicago's far north side at the North Park Village Nature Center - a designated "Star Park".  Located at 5801 N Pulaski Rd, this will be the first time for the Chicago Astronomer crew and already, I understand there is excitement and anticipation at our arrival. 


We will set-up Telescopes at 8:00 pm and share the urban skies till 10:00 pm with park visitors and sky lovers.  We will have the last of Saturn to enjoy... as well as other late summer favorites objects, such as binaries and star clusters.


Join us as the weather will be beautiful and skies almost perfect for prying secrets from the cosmos.

[Centaur]

I might be able to join you, but cannot promise right now.

As the song goes, “And the days grow short when you reach September.” Also the Sun sinks most rapidly beneath the horizon around the times of the equinoxes, causing darkness to arrive more quickly after sunset. So you may want to set up a little earlier than currently planned.

Here are the setting times for solar system bodies as seen from the northside of Chicago during the evening of 2014 SEP 26.

18:41 CDT – Sunset
19:23 CDT – Mercury Sets
19:58 CDT – Moonset
20:45 CDT – Saturn Sets
21:28 CDT – Mars Sets

The waxing crescent Moon will be 2.7 days old, with 7% of its apparent disk illuminated. That will qualify it as Diana’s Bow: www.CurtRenz.com/moon

[kiltedcelt]

Will someone be able to help me collimate my newly purchased, vintage Coulter 10" Odyssey Compact? I center,marked the mirror but the laser collimator I ordered hasn't arrived yet. This is my first reflector. I've owned a Celestron CB 80 for about 30 years, which I'll be bringing as well. I'm looking forward to getting back into amateur astronomy. This will be my first star party in probably over 20 years, and possibly my wife's first ever.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Hi Kilt...

Bring it along.

i don't know if I will have ample time to collimate your scope, (takes awhile for a proper job), as we will be attending to the crowd of anxious star gazers tonight.....which is a solid go!

[Lawrence Redfield]

Have a laser collimator for my 10" Newt, welcome to use it tonight.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

First visit to the North Park Village Nature Center....and a solid time



Located on Chicago's far northside, the joint Chicago Astronomer & Chicago Park District was a blast.  Tons of kids and parents, we had four scopes to share with our park visitors on a hazy fall night.  Arriving at 7:30 pm, we set-up in an out-of-the-way section of the park, surrounded by trees and a small fire-pit going on at the other end...which brought a nice fall-like atmosphere to the observation site...

Astronomers Larry - with his 8" Truss-dob, Tom with his 8" fork SCT and myself with the C11 beast on the CG-5 mount aligned our scopes and ready for a full night of targets....

Chicago Astronomer support crew member Maria, spent the session taking pics and chatting with our visitors.

And...New Chicago Astronomer Forum member Matt, brought along his classic 4" Celestron refractor...





Dew was going to be a problem, but we will go on as long as we can before we all fog up.  We also had the maiden use of the Astr-laser show, a kaleidoscope of animated projected lasers on nearby trees.   The kids dig it...

The session's pics here are brighter than reality, as the area was relatively darkened and extended time exposures made the site look light bathed....

The skies were hazy, so galaxies and nebulas were out, but binaries, star clusters and a couple of planets were fair game for the crew this session.  It takes a bit of time to align scopes with go-tos, doing a three star alignment and three more of calibration stars.  This way, with no Moon or major planets to share, I could just use the iPad to touch what I wanted the scope to slew to fast and accurately.  It was doing a great job, centering the desired objects, but even after constant instruction, someone always grabs the scope and it got whacked out of alignment.  But, soon enough, we were gazing at Alberio, The E.T. star cluster, the Vega system, Neptune & Uranus and other early fall objects...

A lot of nice star gazers came out, old friends, but we also made new fans of the Chicago Astronomer at this event, showing stars like they never saw them before and describing what they were enjoying, fostering discussions of cosmology.  We even had a retired science teacher who had a blast...

At about 9:30/10:00 pm our gear was covered with dew - especially corrector plates...but by that time, the kids were tired out and we had adults to converse with and discuss astronomy.


Our crew for the session....

 Shout to our Chicago Park District Coordinator Kathleen, who's keen interest in astronomy helps make these joint sessions even better!


Stay tuned for our next C.A./C.P.D joint observation session in about two weeks.....