Iowa Star Party Notes
My camp at the Iowa Star Party
September 7th, 2007
The weather was perfect, crystal clear and really, really dark. The best skies I’ve ever seen in Iowa. The Milky Way was amazing, with lots of structure. Everything showed lots of contrast.
I did most of my observing with my 12” dob and 26mm Orion Q70 eyepiece.
I checked out Jupiter first. Three moons were visible as the sky darkened, then four is it grew darker. An Iridium flare occurred shortly after sunset, brightening and fading slowly as it moved down from near Polaris.
M81 and M82 were clearly visible in the same field, with good structure details on M82.
M51 was a little dim, but I could plainly see the whirlpool structure and companion galaxy.
Since it was so dark, I tried the Veil Nebula, which I’ve never seen before. I could just see part of the larger side in my 26mm, and it had good contrast. I switched to my 32mm and put in an O3 filter and it really popped. The other side was amazing with its bright star and gentle curving wisp of nebula.
I also looked at the North American Nebula, but even at my lowest power (46x) it was too large to get a really good view. A nearby refractor with a giant Nagler eyepiece showed it better, with great contrast.
M27 was great, with excellent detail and contrast.
M13 was better than I’d ever seen, with clearly resolved stars all the way to its core.
September 8th, 2007
I spent most of the day sitting in the sun waiting for it to get dark, reading from Guns, Germs, and Steel. The banquet dinner was excellent, with pork chops, scalloped potatoes, cucumber salad, green beans, bread, and brownies. We ate outside at the River House in excellent weather.
The presentation by Dr. Kawaler was very interesting. He discussed current and future methods of detecting exoplanets in the habitable zone, and his work on the upcoming Kepler mission. He also told us of an exciting discovery coming out on Wednesday, but apparently we can’t talk about it yet!
He claimed to remember me from Astro 250 in 2001, but he may have been humoring me.
We went back to the star field shortly after dark. The forecast called for partly cloudy, then mostly cloudy at midnight, followed by a 20% chance of thunderstorms.
I observed a few targets, including Herschel’s Garnet Star, which happens to be yellow. The clouds soon moved in and I packed everything up.
