There was an executive meeting. They discussed the Hector J Robinson observatory, the proposed rules we'll be observing and how the FAAC core team from the SIG group and core members may work in the observatory. Also there was discussion about keys and access for FAAC members, basically covering many of the basics and some discussion about how this would hopefully typically work. Some discussion about liability or questions about the club and understanding of that with the school system, questions about what would happen under different scenarios came up. Some of the questions reminded me about how much people have to worry today about getting sued or people who might sue you over anything.
In the good ol' days, we didn't worry as much about that stuff, but then again, we were kids at least I was when I was at the observatory. So maybe all those questions were handled by the grown ups and sponsors at that time. I can remember one of our sponsors being proclaimed a curator of the observatory by the Lincoln Park School board. They gave him special status as he had helped out so much at that time.
Back then things were a little different. But I'm better off not comparing those days with today and move forward.
This post will be pretty brief. I'm going to be posting more photos, but I'm not sure how many today. I went out to the observatory yesterday. I felt relieved at some of the proposed rules. The rules for FAAC operation of the observatory seem pretty sound to me, but that's really a longer subject and nothing that I need to post here.
I called Harold from the club. He's one of the senior members of the club if you want to talk about how long people have been in Astronomy. He's been into Astronomy and fired up about it for 64 years. I called him to let him know that I was heading by the observatory because it was clear out. I sent out a message at about 2 or 3 PM to other core FAAC members dealing with setup that I was thinking about going out there, but everyone was busy and couldn't go out.
I sat in the observatory for two hours. The sky was clear with some clouds in the distance, really hardly anything you could notice. I was trying to learn how the mount's goto function was working and also to make things interesting fired up a computer with "The Sky 6" on it.
This computer in theory can easily drive the telescope. I had Harold on the speaker phone and we kept the conversation going about general things mostly. About the observatory and the club, we chatted back in forth about a number of subjects which is how these phone calls can get going between friends and club members.
I didn't even open the dome most of the time I was there. I kept playing with The Sky 6, but couldn't figure out how to have it direct the telescope. It seemed like some secret command was just hiding somewhere under some menu window tab or something. I could get it to connect with the telescope, but couldn't get or find a command that sent the telescope anywhere. Harold mentioned something about needing a copy of an old manual for some older product. Actually I'm so tired this morning I forgot what that was and didn't write it down at the time, but I'll call him and look it up on the internet later.
I pulled out my laptop and tried to get a wifi connection because I forgot to print the quick start guide Greg O had written after spending an evening of testing the system with the FAAC group. His two page quick start guide was somewhere on my laptop, but I couldn't find it. I didn't have it in an easy to find place. I couldn't remember the name. I couldn't connect to the WIFI at the school because of security. There was some open wifi, perhaps from a neighbor, but I wasn't going to try to connect. While I had The Sky 6 up, I didn't find a way to minimize and close the window to get to the net and probably would be getting off the task at hand surfing for some manual. If I was on the net I might be able to download the quick start guide from Greg O. But I didn't think to do this from the computer while The Sky 6 was up. I briefly thought about it, but how hard can it be to find a small paper. I used my search features on the Macintosh laptop I had with me to attempt to find the quick start guide. I couldn't find it. It was there somewhere. I decided to look for the guide using my iphone and old emails but I couldn't locate this email and attachment on the iphone either. Perhaps I was trying to multi-task to much and with to many new things.
So I finally abandoned The Sky 6 and focused more on the Losmandy controller and tried to recall how to get the goto to work. I was able bring up the Goto function and selected M50 as the target. The scope moved and went to M50. (I'm recalling it as being M50.) Anyway, it was one of the M objects, the details of which one are not to important . . . because the scope found it. . . or perhaps it didn't.
The telescope was aiming at the location where this object was supposed to be. I had to move the dome and open up the shutter. I rotated to dome to match the telescope location. I was flying blind toward this M object it would seem. Flying like a pilot would perhaps on instruments alone. Would the GOTO be working and be in sync. Had the mount remembered where it was supposed to be and where the objects in the sky actually were?
The shutter started to open. There in the shutter clearly sat the Michigan Nebula. The Michigan Nebula is what some members in the FAAC group refers to as clouds. The entire sky at least most of it was covered with clouds. That is most of it and there were little holes here and there, but nowhere openings in the clouds anywhere near where the shutter and telescope were looking. I could try to find something else where a small break in the clouds might appear. There was a 10 degree break in the clouds to the north stretching up from the horizon. Maybe the clouds would move onward and there would be clear skies over the observatory. I had been there for 2 hours. Not much to show for those two hours, but I had a nice phone conversation and at least that was something.
I decided to pack it in. I had an errand to do and locked everything up and headed home. In about 20 minutes I was home. I looked up all the clouds had moved off. It made sense that when I finally left the sky would quickly clear. It was Murphy's law at work.
I looked up and the sky looked really nice. Viewing I thought would only be average when I looked at the Clear Sky Chart earlier today. I thought there was to be humid air of 80% tonight and that probably wouldn't make high powered views look very well. Mars and other targets seemed to call out and dare me to come back out and take a look.
I did some things at home and then announced that I'm going back out. I sent a note to the FAAC core group members who are involved letting them know of my plans. Just in case anyone was up this late, happened on the internet and were bored and wanted to burn the midnight oil. I figured half of astronomy is being nuts enough to go out and spend long hours and get in trouble for it later. Maybe there were other lunatics about this evening in the group that would want to join me.
They were probably all asleep, nestled in their warm homes, and getting some rest on a late Thursday night.
I went back out and the sky looked good. I was starting out at 11:50 PM. I had printed 8 copies of the quick start sheets and took seven of them along with me to leave at the observatory.
It was almost midnight, should I call Greg O and let him know by phone I was out there and might be out there for a couple of hours yet. Would it wake him up? Would he appreciate the late night call? Hmm. . . he's an astronomer. . . it's clear out, he should be awake.
Funny how a short post can turn into a long one.
(To be continued.)
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