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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Adler crew works Overnight Camping at Northerly Island

Pre-Full Perigee Moon

22 June 2013

Adler crew for this session: Joe, Diana, Nicole and Larry

The Chicago Park District conducts a couple of Overnight camping opportunities at Northerly Island and the Adler was invited to work the event and share scope views with it's participants. Arriving on-site at 8pm, I met Adler Astronomer, Larry in the parking lot. With a lot of gear to lug out at our observation site, I loaded it all in my van and with flashing light atop - I drove to our spot directly for easy unload.

The skies worked well with us, and before we knew it, the near full perigee Moon was prominent in the east. I traveled "light" and brought along the CG-5 mount with the trusty C102mm Refractor. Larry brought along a spotting scope and the cool Porta-ball uber easy carry scope. We had two new Adler Telescope facilitators with us for this event, Diana & Nicole...and this would be their first field activity...

Setting up near the path, we all targeted the Moon before the campers arrived...

By 9pm, the story telling at the camp concluded, (I could hear the distant Native American flutes), and the participants made their way over to our scopes...

Normally, I always hike up the tripod legs on my scopes as instruments to the cosmos and something to reach up to...not look down upon - and for personal comfort...but we had a lot of little ones to attend to and I kept the scope low...

As soon as the skies let us, I slewed over to Saturn, which always impresses our guests. Popping a 26mm 2" eyepiece and a 2X Barlow, we were getting decent larger views in my scope. I did not properly align the mount and was losing Saturn in the field of view from time to time. Diana, was carefully monitoring my scope, doing a heck of a job, making sure the scope was not grabbed and handled and attending to our guests - letting me know throughout the session to recenter Saturn.

The Chicago BlackHawks were playing their finals and boat horns blasted when the home team scored....and let off a cacophony when they did win the game. Every Saturday for the summer, Navy Pier does a fireworks show, which have us enjoying an interesting view back home at the Adler Dome and pyrotechnics...

Back to the Moon for a bit...

Being a few degrees closer than usual, I did notice some subtle differences with the lunar landscape, such as the ejecta rays were a bit more outstanding....

This reverse pic above shows Copernicus's ray system really well, transversing across to nearly the opposite limb.

By 10:00 pm, our public session was over, but I kept my gear set-up and slewed around a bit for our crew for about another half an hour, using the wireless remote control option of the iPAd/Skyfi interface. But...with the near full Moon and the limited aperture of the 4" Refractor, pickings were slim. We packed up and headed out of the park, satisfied on a good solid session - with decent skies, a bright Moon and beautiful Saturn....