Santa Cruz Astronomy Club

Sitting here in my hotel room in Blythe on my way home from TSP. It's 107 degrees here - definitely not used to these kind of temps. The last two days at TSP we got rain in the afternoon and into the evening. The ground really sucks up the water and the rain kept the dust down. All together we only had 3-4 good nights out of seven nights, but the Santa Cruz contingent was great company. Can't speak for the other guys, but I think it was a fantastic trip and I'll definitely try to go back again next year.

Well, here we, it's Friday already. Both Wed. and Thurs. night we got skunked. Clouds have been a problem all week for us. Last night we actually got some drops of rain so a bunch of us tore down and stuffed everything into the car just to be on the safe side. Turned out that the thunderstorms that were forecast never really materialized. We're all being optimistic that we'll still get a couple more nights of clear skies before we head on home on Sunday.

Well, I made out here to West Texas for the Texas Star Party (TSP). 1350 miles and two and a half days. Fred, Al and Jeff left earlier than I did and did some sightseeing on the way.

Got here about 2:30 on Sunday – the other guys had spent the night in nearby Ft. Davis and were already setup and ready to go. The Prude Ranch is at about 5000’ so getting the tent put up and the scope stuff up brings on some huffing and puffing. The 80 degree weather factors in as well :) Check out the TSP website to see what the place looks like.

I wanted to post my finished result for those of you I talked to about what I was trying to do , it still didnt really come out as I was hoping since I got no IFN or good background from the widefield shot but it was still fun.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31986095@N05/8584124639/lightbox/

we've all seen many versions of the mid 1990s Light Pollution of the Night Sky maps from the data produced by an Italian university group.... some folks thought the Continental US data was flawed, and adjusted some of the parameters, and used circa 2001 satellite telemetry, along with census data and other inputs to the original light model. One of the reasons for doing this was that the original data set used winter telemetry from the Northeast US, and they assumed the snow cover would reflect more ligth into the sky.

Spent the last three days over in Santa Clara at the Advanced Imaging Conference. My brain is over-full with asto imaging and processing info. There were imagers from all over the world in attendance and everyone had a great time. There were four of us from SCAC - Fred, Jeff, Al and me. The food was fantastic and the venue very comfortable both in the main room and the workshops. The final event was the door prizes.