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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Chicago Astronomer Fall Equinox Star Party

22 September 2013 - 7pm

The Chicago Astronomer will set-up telescopes to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox Sunday, the 22nd of September 2013 at 7pm. Officially, the moment that our Sun crosses the Equator on it's way back north is just a bit earlier in the day - and as there will be no solar observing, this is just fine.

We will have some Lunar viewing late in the session, some Saturn and Venus early in the session and some of our favorite early fall targets. Temps will be fall like cool, but the skies will be clear.

Fall astronomy is my favorite...

Be there and share the urban skies with Astronomers and friends.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Iridium Flare -

As an added treat to this fine night of scopes and Astronomers...

...we will have a great bright Iridium flare at 7:26 pm flying at 60 degrees high from the SSE and at a remarkable -8.4 magnitude...!!

Not to be missed!

[magic612]

Hope I can make it. I gotta a ton of stuff to do tomorrow, but I'll try.

[patrickm]

Got a show but may try to swing by afterwards and see what's up.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

We are a solid go for tonight's Equinox gathering of sky lovers and telescopes.

Be there...you know you want to.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Full pics and narrative in a bit...

Fun Equinox....

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Sharing the Autumnal Equinox with fans and fellow Astronomers...

This was a special Chicago Astronomer session, as we face the coming colder temps face on for this Equinox. We had a full compliment of Chicago Astronomers on hand to attend to out visitors. C.A.s Paulie, Bill, Dave, Rich and myself had a great fun time together...

Venus and Saturn were top on the list for the crew before the planets sank deep into the muck and lost soon after. Rich brought along his new VX Mount and C102 Refractor. (I have the same Refractor that I use often and rides on top of the C11 while on the beefy Losmandy mount. Performs beautifully.)

It was a bit chilly, but I was quite comfortable as we attended to our visitors ...

The whole C.A. crew was pointing this out, and explaining that throughout the session...

New Chicago Astronomer fan Earl, stopped by and shared the skies with us. he also took this nice panoramic shot of the observation site:

And Stasia, a great Chicago Astronomer fan, brought her enthusiasm and iPad to our session...

She followed along with her SkySafari program and recited from memory what we were targeting in our scopes.

Very cool...

Long time Chicago Astronomer fan Berk stopped by with his crew and joined in...

And...

Mamdouh, a regular Chicago Astronomer fan, brings his cute little girl to our events...

And we continue...

C.A. Bill brought his Vixen RC, Dave his uber portable table top Reflector, Paulie his trusty 6" Dob and I decided that since there would be some time between the setting planets and the rising Moon - I would ride the C11 OTA on top of the CG-5 and use the iPad mini to remotely guide the scope to fainter targets for this session. The go-to slewing performed very well and brought in the fuzzies. Although, the seeing was not optimal this evening, with high diffusing haze, the contrast just wasn't there this session. Normally bright targets like M13 were faded and disappointing...

We had a nice wedding group that stopped by our session and were thrilled in sharing the skies with us...

Dave and Paulie relocated their scopes to catch the rising Moon over the Planetarium building and shared nice views. I had to wait till it hit my angle, but by that time it was late into the session and only a few enjoyed the Moon in the C11.

I had intended to cease the session at around 9ish, but we were all having a good time together and attending to our guests, that we went on till about 10:30 om and were out of the area by 11:00 pm. We had 56 guests enjoying our urban skies for this evening.

This session was a blast and we all had a great time together bringing in the fall Equinox...!