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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Chicago Astronomer/Chicago Park District at Bull Frog Lake

Willow Springs/Pulaski Woods

21 September 2013

The Chicago Astronomer will work the Overnight camping event at BullFrog Lake this weekend.

NOTE: This is a Closed Event with only registered camping participants. We understand that there may be approximately 300/400 individuals to attend to.

Close to 9pm, we will have the waning Moon to share...as well as early fall favorite targets. Pics of the event soon.

[goodcoco2]

Great to meet Astronomer Joe and others at Bullfrog Lake this past weekend at park district family camping program! My family thanks you for the amazing views of Saturn, Vega and the beautiful brightly illuminated Moon! Your enthusiasm and passion are contagious! Gracias Joe!

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Hi CG....

Great that you enjoyed sharing the "Slightly" Urban skies at Willow springs...!

The full pics and narrative are coming up of the cool event and I'm sure the Chicago Park District and Forrest Preserve would like to hear about your experience with the stars.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Wide skies at Bull Frog Lake -

This was a great opportunity to share the skies with our Chicago Park District/Cook County Forrest Preserve guests - and leave the city for darker skies - but not too far. Arriving near dusk, we set-up on a gentle knoll with the Lake in front of us, ready to bring the cosmos down to our group.

My Chicago Astronomer support crew for this private event was Maria & Barbara...

We had tents and campfires around our observation site...

We started off with bright Venus and slewed over to Saturn. We often hear that Saturn looks like a sticker and this session was no different. Observing the ringed planet, even so low near the horizon and less than sharp - was a thrill for our guests...

The smell of campfires in autumn is nice as we explored the planets and discussed astronomy. In the distance could be heard the cries of wolves...?

I had the C11 on the Losmandy mount and tracking well, but since I was on a slight slant on the knoll, I had to make adjustments to the tracking throughout the night...

The C11 performed beautifully as we slewed over to other celestial targets such as: The E.T. Cluster, Alberio, The Double cluster in Perseus, binaries throughout the session. The observation area was a dark one, and I could discern the slight hint of the Milky Way starting to shine through. One of our guests asked what that star formation to the south was. What he was seeing in the low south was the Tea Pot in Sagittarius. I showed where the "steam" of the Milky way was rising out from the spout.

We were fortunate to have a rising Moon for our session while I was there. I slewed it over as it just cleared the treeline...and was it bright!

Our guests were fascinated with the lunar surface. I used my iPad Mini with the "LunarMap HD" App to instruct and display what we were observing...

I enjoyed chatting about cosmology with our guests and met a few participants all the way from my neighborhood in Pilsen in the Heart of Chicago area...

!...

At about 10:30 pm, we break down our site for this session...

We attended to just about all of the campsite participants, which totaled near 60. The air was crisp and chilly and it was only till the very end that I started to get chilled with just my C.A. shirt.

This was a very successful CPD/CCFP camping event and hope we can do it again next year... ;D