[Peyton-observing] Observation Night Feb 1st

[jegunn]

Thanks all, and to Chris and Chelsea. Does anyone have any clue how
the telescope was set to altazimuth? We should probably check ALL the
settings, although if the telescope pointed they are most likely
mostly OK. It would not be a bad idea to go through the setup
procedure step by step.

--jim

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Munan Gong wrote:

> Hi everyone,The observing night is unbelievably amazing! 
> We came up to the dome at 9pm, and enjoyed ourselves with stars and music
> till 11pm, before the neuroscience prospectives came. Even with stadium
> lights on, we saw a plenty of very faint objects down to ~8.4mag : M81 and
> M82, the crab nebular, M40(double star), M106, NGC0869(double cluster), M94,
> M51(Whirlpool galaxy), M32(faint companion of M31) even the astroid vista,
> and of course, fabulous view of Jupiter and Orion nebular.
> There are about 20 prospectives today, and we showed them Jupiter, Orion
> nebular and M44 cluster, and they stayed for about an hour till midnight.
> 
> Some notes:
> 1. 20 people is really a big group - we didn't split them in two groups
> because it was really late anyway. Some people didn't have time to adjust
> the focus, and that was a shame.. Although we have a lot of astro grads to
> help, the dome is really packed and noisy with a lot of people. So I think
> actually ~<10 people at one time will be much nicer.
> 
> 2. The telescope was not tracking and directing to the objects properly in
> the beginning. Then Chris and Chelsea found out the problem - The local time
> is off by a few minutes, and the setting somewhere(can you remind me Chris?)
> is to 'ALT**' rather than 'POLAR'. After adjusting that , the telescope was
> working well. The east button was working in the beginning for mysterious
> reasons, and it broke down again after sometime..
> 
> 3. It would be a perfect night if the lights of the stadium is closed. We
> did send out the email to require that, but somehow they were not doing it.
> It's not the firs time for this to happen.. Anyone knows how to solve this
> problem?
> 
> 4. We had a lot of fun ourselves when there were only astro people in the
> dome. Sometime we shall find a night as good as this, and have a star gazing
> party music and refreshments in Peyton :)
> 
> Finally, thank you so much Chris, Chelsea for helping out with setting up
> the telescope and organize the observation, I would have been crying with a
> not working telescope without you. Thanks Elisa for helping sort out all
> details, and thank you for coming, giving help and nice company, Pete, Alex,
> Andrea, Manu and Simo. I'm really moved that you guys came to help and
> stayed so late at night, even though some had to get up very early tomorrow.
> This is the best Friday night I have had in Peyton.
> 
> Cheers,
> Munan
> 
>