(This article originally appeared in the Q1 2005 STAR news letter. -Ian)
Winter Star Party 2005
by Ian Hewitt
It’s winter time again in Raleigh, and that brings the chance to escape to warmer climes!
This week is one of the “hottest” tickets in astronomy circles. Year after year, it’s a very popular event with a guaranteed sell out months in advance. About a dozen members of the Raleigh Astronomy Club made the 17-plus hour trek down to the Sunshine State, telescopes in tow, for a chance to see southern delights. These included: Bill Webster, Jerry Watson, Al Hamrick, John Nigro, Jim Pressley, Jim Anderson, Pierre Faucher, Scott Carpenter, Christian Carpenter, Jerry Zerbach, and Paul Rust.
The WSP is held at the Girl Scout Camp on West Summerland Key. It’s about 30 miles north of Key West and south of the city of Marathon on US-1. The key itself is very small and the camp is right on the beach. Although RV’s are allowed, space is limited and the weather is nice, so camping is the order of the day. There are plenty of restaurants close by, and shower facilities are in the camp, so it’s not exactly roughing it.
Dedicated astronomers that we are, we headed down on Super Bowl Sunday (watch that traffic in Jacksonville!) to get in line for the Monday opening of WSP. While some members slept in line outside the gates, some of us spent that evening with the Scott family. Gary and his family were very active in the Club and recently moved to Melbourne. As always, their hospitality was great.
The weather was very good this year, topping into the mid 70’s during the day, and dropping into 60’s during the night, with the exception of the last two nights, where we had wind, a bit of rain, and record lows of 50 degrees! We were able to observe for at least part of every night. However, for all but the two days, there was always a band of low clouds on the southern horizon, hiding the southern treasures that we came to see. When the rain came through on Thursday afternoon with the cooler weather, the horizon opened up and the game was afoot!
The WSP is located at about 24 degrees north latitude, which provides almost 14 degrees more southern sky than here in Raleigh. In addition, the orientation of the key means that the southern horizon is over the ocean, so it is very clear down to the horizon. For me, it was the first time I had ever seen Omega Centauri or the Southern Cross (which stands up nicely on the horizon at about 2:30 in the morning).
Some of the objects that are available to be seen are the Coal Sack Nebula (Dark Nebula), Eta Carinae, Omega Centauri, and many globular and open clusters. For those of us who are working on our Caldwell Observing programs, it provides an opportunity to reach down to about Caldwell 98 or 99 (out of 109).
There were many other objects to be sketched including M6, M7, M41, M64, M83, M109, C40 (NGC 3626), C46 (NGC 2261), C53 (NGC 3115), C54 (NGC 2506), C59 (NGC 3242), C60 (NGC 4038), C61 (NGC 4039), C67 (NGC 1097), C73 (NGC 1851), C74 (NGC 3132), C75 (NGC 6124), C77 (NGC 5128), C79 (NGC 3201), C84 (NGC 5286), C85 (IC 2391), C88 (NGC 5823), C91 (NGC 3532), C98 (NGC 4609), C99, SAA 8 (NGC 5139), SAA 13 (NGC 2359), SAA 54 (Fornax Galaxy Cluster), SAA 64 (NGC 2232), SAA 68 (NGC 2301), SAA 70 (NGC 2438), SAA 71 (NGC 2467), and SAA 82 (NGC4361).
Of course, the superb observing is not the only reason to go to the Winter Star Party; it also features vendors, speakers, door prizes, and the chance to hob-knob with other astronomers from as far away as Canada. Now that’s a long drive!
There were many vendors present, including all the well known names in amateur astronomy. Meade had a large pavilion, just having announced their acquisition of Coronado (but to Bill’s great disappointment they had no PSTs).
Other vendors there included Al and Judy Nagler of Televue Optics, Howie Glatter (but no Green Laser Pointers allowed), Camera Concepts, and Astronomy-To-Go.
One of the other main attractions at WSP are the workshops. Most of these are focused on imaging and were excellent. They included all day workshops on using Photoshop for processing astronomical images (by Scott Ireland), Antarctic Meteorites, Richard Deluca on Stonehenge, and Don Machholz on comet hunting.
As if that’s not all, there was a very organized children’s program, a large swap meet, over a hundred door prizes from books to eyepieces to complete telescopes, and a cook-out on Thursday night.
It was a great event and personally, I look forward to going back again!
See You There!!
