(The One with the Solo Keyholder)

I was the only attendee for the impromptu star party that I hosted last night. Skies were clear the entire time that I was there. The metadata of the exposures from my imaging shows 47 degrees and 45% humidity at 7:00 PM, falling to 41 degrees by 9:00 PM, but I think these values are ~5 degrees warmer than the real air temperature. The bright, waxing gibbous moon was was an uninvited guest, hanging out near the zenith and generally degrading the conditions for everyone (i.e, me).

Nontheless, I used my 8″ Dob to observe the double and multiple stars Gamma Leporis, Sigma Orionis (a breathtaking quadruple star system with the triple star Struve 761 in the same field), Zeta Orionis (Alnitak) and 145 Canis Majoris (aka h 3945), which some folk presume to call “the winter Albireo.” I also observed open clusters M41, M46, M47 and NGC 23622 (Caldwell 64, the Tau Canis Majoris cluster). The last one was my favorite, due to the namesake 4th-magnitude star blazing alone in the center, surrounded by a ring of much fainter stars.

I imaged the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros with my Vaonis Vespera II smart scope, using a dual-band filter and the new 3D-printed dew shield that I bought on Etsy. I obtained 75 minutes of data (450 ten-second sub exposures) of a 2.8- x 2.1-degree mosaic and was happy with the results. I’m attaching the JPG processed by the telesccope, but I’m going to work on processing the TIF file myself to see if I can do better than the telescope software. I would like to someday get to a place where I consider my processed images to be worthy of being displayed at the HAL monthly meetings! Not there yet.

I had to politely ask a couple of people to leave the park at dusk so I could lock the gate. One was a driving instructor giving lessons to student around the roads and parking lots. These lessons have been conducted before all three star parties that I’ve hosted, but I don’t recall seeing them previously. The other was a woman who showed up right at dusk and requested a 5-minute extension to walk her dog (which I granted). There were no other issues, and I locked up HALO and the park and left at about 9:10 PM.

I had a very nice time, but I’m hoping to attract some guests (besides the moon, which will not be invited back) to my next star party!

Ernie Morse