February 06, 2010 - Harold Campbell Report

Hello all,

Saturday a few of us (Charlie Hein, Manuel, Fernando & family + 1 neighbor ) ventured out to Harold Campbell for some much needed time under the stars. Early on the sky was clear but the wind was gusty. As the evening wore on the wind calmed down considerably as did the wind chill! Fernando was working with his web cam grabbing some images of Mars with Charlie Hein's help and later on was giving us some very nice views of the M42, Andromeda and a very bright Mars. It was nice to have visual scope setup in addition to the imaging ones.

As luck would have it, just as the wind became a non-issue my battery began to run low, this happens when you don't charge it, Doh! Manny to the rescue. Manny was kind enough to lend me a spare he had with him and after another star alignment routine I was up and running again.

I was hoping to put a lot of time the California Nebula but only managed to get 2 hours. Also after taking a closer look at my images I noticed the I had an extra 7mm spacer in the image train resulting in some less than round stars on out toward the edges. So goes another night of learning with this new set up.

On the bright side the camera (QHY8) performed great all evening with no dewing or frosting.