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Note: Teeter's Telescope is a quarterly column featured in Howell High School's newspaper, the Accent. Issues of the newspaper can be provided free of charge to interested club members.
Every year amateur astronomers, like myself, look forward to the line-up of summer gatherings for observing the skies above, called star parties. Whether it is Stellafane, held in southern Vermont, the Connecticut Star Party, held in northwestern Connecticut or the countless others, it certainly gets us pumped up. The first star party of the 1999 observing season was the Delmarva StarGaze held at Tuckahoe State Park in Maryland. In the northern United States, the Delmarva StarGaze marks a transition between the cold, brutal winter and the warm ebbing of the coming summer and it's array of Nebulae and Clusters.
My father, myself and my friend Adrian Lozinski (from Medford, Long Island) set out at 1:30 PM on the Friday afternoon marking the first day of the event. On the way down we not only encountered clouds, but also rain and at time hail from above. Things definitely were not looking on the up and up; I thought to myself many times that staying home would have been a better idea. However, once we hit Maryland after crossing the Delaware border, the sky opened up, the clouds parted and the rain dried.
Later, at 5:00 PM we arrived at the observing field of the Delmarva StarGazers. There were already numerous scopes, tents, cars and motor homes stationed in the field. We drove to the far end of what would be our little part of the observing field and grabbed our usual spot. Only the Southern horizon was blocked by trees, however, we would manage since the best objects would lay straight up as night fell.
Friday night was the worse of the two nights overall with patchy clouds and fog throughout the night. As darkness surrounded us and about 90 other attendees, you could hear the 'coffee-grinder' drives of the LX-200s and see the silhouettes of the monster dobs (the largest being a 25").
Until nearly 11:00 PM the sky was clear and crisp until clouds rolled in and stole the show from Orion, Leo, Ursa Major and the countless objects that litter the sky. My scope never crept out from under it's cover that night because of the threat of rain and clouds. I later heard that the sky cleared again at 1:00 AM but with heavy fog on the ground and still again at 3:00 AM but absolutely crystal clear. I unfortunately slept through those wee hours of the morning.
Saturday morning was the swapmeet and breakfast. As usual, there were about four or five vendors set up selling their goodies. That day I picked up a 1.25" UHC filter (got that in exchange for an eyepiece of mine), a drive corrector and a few eyepieces from the New Jersey eyepiece maker, Paul Rini.
Also, during the day the members of the Delmarva StarGazers were working diligently on their trademark '6-inch scope in a day' project. Don Surles, the club's President, ground the entire mirror in less than 5 hours while other members worked on the mount and tube. Even with the absence of an aluminum coating on the mirror, the scope gave superb images. Later, during the raffles the scope was won by a very happy attendee. As for myself, I won a free year's subscription to ASTRONOMY magazine.
Again, day turned to night and with it came a late sun shower. It was a sprinkle at best, but still enough to send people fleeing to their scopes to get them covered. Fifteen minutes later, the rain passed and we were left with an absolutely beautiful night, one to rival any that I've seen at a star party. We were lucky enough to see two satellites and three meteors with one being a real show stopper (it brightened, faded, brightened again and finally faded after having tracked through nearly two thirds of the sky). Such objects as M51, M63, M64, M44, M101 and countless others showed magnificently in my 8" Dob with detail I haven't seen in quite some time.
Before the night drew to a close I tried to get around to as many scopes as possible. While that wasn't a total success, I still was able to see M63 through an 18" f/4.5 Dob and a number of deep space objects through a friend's 12.5" f/6 Dob. In those two scopes, galaxies looked like galaxies and clusters were resolved right down to the core.
It was nearly 1:30 AM and I was getting tired and very cold (temps were down in the higher 20's) so I packed everything up and called it a night. I had seen quite a few objects and was impressed with every successive target. Furthermore, after many months of searching I think I finally came across a worthy low power eyepiece to facilitate my finding of objects; the 1.25" 35mm Paul Rini Erfle. In comparison to a 35mm Orion Ultrascopic, there was noticeably no difference whatsoever.
This year's Delmarva StarGaze was the best of the two that I've attended thus far. The observing was great, the sky was more cooperative than was expected, I
got a lot of great compliments on my scope and talked to many great people. I cannot think of a better way than this weekend went to 'kick off' the star party
season !
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