TED'S ASTROPIX:
THE CHERRY SPRINGS STAR PARTY PAGE
© 2012-2014 Ted Saker, Jr. All rights reserved.
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● CSSP 2014
Cherry Springs Star Party 2014 (June 26-29, 2014)
July 2, 2014: If you're looking for a write-up on CSSP 2013, don't bother. Like 2011, it was a rain fest. Clouds we can handle, but rain drives everyone into their own cocoons. Nothing to see, move along.
I've come to the conclusion that CSSP stands for "crap shoot star party" because the weather is very capricious. We never know what to expect. The forecasters' predictions were divided, but the Clear Sky Clock won the accuracy prize.
This year's event brought three lovely nights of clear skies, but the first two were very damp. I didn't bring dew fighting equipment, even though I know better. Too bad Joe and I weren't vending Joe's fine Astrozap products. I spent the three nights collecting narrowband data on another summer nebula, the Trifid. I shot the Lagoon and the Swan at TSP 2014 and intend to complete my collection of summer nebulae in narrowband before the summer's over. I probably should get more data on the S-II and O-III layers. I had to discard all of Friday night's frames as unusable.
M 20 Emission and Reflection Nebula in Sagittarius ("The Trifid"). HST palette. 6000 sec. L, 3000 sec. H-a, 3000 sec. S-II, 2250 sec. O-III. Optics: AT8RC @ f/8. Camera: ST8-XME. Filters: Custom Scientific Luminance & H-a, Schuler S-II, Baader O-III. |
Cherry Springs Star Party 2012 (June 14-17, 2012)
June 20, 2012: This
year, weather conditions have been pretty kind to star parties with
abundant clear nights. At the Cherry Springs State Park near
Coudersport, PA, skies are Bortle 2 (very dark) but the climate is very
unpredictable. I have attended four star parties there since
2009, averaging one clear night out of four. In the major
leagues, a .250 average would be very good, but for astronomy,
especially imaging, it's disappointing.
In
stark contrast to last year's swamp fest edition, this year's event was
nothing short of amazing. No black flies, black bears, mosquitoes,
or other annoyances were observed, and stars were plentiful on all
four nights I was there. The only downside was that only two
nights were suitable for imaging, and there was only six hours of
complete darkness this time of year. The result was only one
astro-image: the heart of the Crescent Nebula. Due to an
equipment change, I had to remove the f/6.3 focal reducer that yielded
an effective focal length of 1750 mm to shoot this image at the full
f/10 and 2790 mm focal length. This pushes the G-11's mechanical
limits, but the results are pretty good, in my humble opinion.
Although
my vending activities prevented me from attending David Eicher's
keynote presentation, we had a lively discussion on the topic of
discordant QSO redshifts. Apparently, this hypothesis was
"resolved" thirty years ago, but some ideas never lose their
appeal.
IMAGES FROM CSSP 2012
The Heart of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus (NGC 6888). C-11 @ f/10 (!). 45 m. L & R, 67.5 m. G & B |
Ready for action. |
Clear, Dark and Steady Skies!