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Peak Star Party 2013

jamespels

By jamespels
in Star Parties & Astro Events

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Rockrae78

Rockrae78

Posted
Posted

I too admitted defeat with respect to the weather... Left this morning! The wind woke me up at about 6:00am and terrified me... With a weather forecast of heavy rain and wind gusts up to 36mph, I caved and packed up. Of course, about 20 miles away from the site, I saw blue skies so no doubt it will have been better weather tonight! Gah!

In all serousness though, I had a fab time, met some lovely people and the impromptu quiz on Sat night was a great alternative to sitting in the tent!

Apologies to those I didn't get a chance to meet - after talking on here - but the rain pretty much kept me in my tent so I didn't get a chance to wander around much!

Big thanks to James and others for organising the event! Hopefully we'll have better luck with the weather next year!

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jamespels

jamespels

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Hi everybody, and thank you all very much for the wonderful feedback! I know I am the front for PSP but this was a big team effort so here is to Paul who drove it all forward this year, and to Steven and Georgina without whom we would have had no chance.

It was a shame we couldn't do anything about the weather but we cannot thank Shane and the UKAI guys enough for all their support and help over the weekend.

Photo competition details to follow - I will try to get the upload process sorted this afternoon if possible.

Thanks again everybody - we will be confirming PSP2014 dates shortly - as usual, bookings will be open to previous visitors for a couple of weeks before everybody else.

James.

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wookie1965

wookie1965

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Hi everybody, and thank you all very much for the wonderful feedback! I know I am the front for PSP but this was a big team effort so here is to Paul who drove it all forward this year, and to Steven and Georgina without whom we would have had no chance.

It was a shame we couldn't do anything about the weather but we cannot thank Shane and the UKAI guys enough for all their support and help over the weekend.

Photo competition details to follow - I will try to get the upload process sorted this afternoon if possible.

Thanks again everybody - we will be confirming PSP2014 dates shortly - as usual, bookings will be open to previous visitors for a couple of weeks before everybody else.

James.

James and your team i had a great time apart from the weather and my tent leaking meeting people and the talks i will be back next year thank you. Sorry i had to come home early and miss the quiz and bottle rocket i will be making sure there are no leaks next time but then next year we will have clear skies.

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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Thanks to James and team for an excellent weekend. Looking positively the weather did actually mean that the social side was a lot more active and allowed more 'mingling' than usual so lots more people met new friends.

The weather was atrocious although (typically as I returned from a sojourn to the toilet block) there was a tiny gap in the clouds through which a few lucky beggars near my tent saw a total of two stars through the thin patch. So officially it counts as a star party after all!

Apologies if people could not hear much of what I was saying but James et al have plans for solving that next year for the speakers then. Notes are available either earlier in this thread or just pm me and I'll send across a copy of each.

Great to meet friends old and new and see you all next year or sooner.

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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I totally agree with the comment by Nick above about getting a group of volunteers together to agree to take a small group of maybe 5 newbies for 'happy hour' ('helpy hour' ?) or whatever to give a mini tour of a few objects and perhaps culminating in them each finding a final object by themselves to show the others. This sort of skill is so much more easily absorbed with the above method than by a talk I reckon.

The same could apply to collimation etc. Let's hope we get the weather next time to make it a better trip in terms of observing.

There's an incredible amount of work goes into organising this sort of event and I suspect activities takes up a fair bit of that time. If some of the more experienced attendees can share this load by doing something like the above then it might be much fairer all round.

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Stu

Stu

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Agreed Shane. More than happy to help out next year. Being a softy southerner, there is a limit to what I can do in terms of local organization, but happy to help with sky tours for new starters and in other ways. Might have to borrow a bigger scope of some sort if my old newt isn't sorted by then!

Stu

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wookie1965

wookie1965

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That is the main reason i came to get help fining the messier`s and other objects going to give Shane`s star hopping a good go but i have light polluted skies, going to try and find somewhere close by out of town great meeting you all, not done my scope yet Shane doing it today was busy yesterday getting plaster and light fittings the wife wants living room doing now.

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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dark skies are good but there's lots to do at home too. I'd definitely remove the steel washer as this seemed to take up all the slack on the secondary tilt adjustment. don't worry too much though, just enjoy the scope! with a RDF and optical finder, locating objects where there is some light pollution is made far easier; especially so if it's a RACI finder in my experience. the small circles I gave out will work with pretty much any 9x finder or any finder with a 5 degree field using the Sky and telescope atlas.

if you are not sure what your finder field is or how far apart 5 degrees is, then you can use the two right hand stars in Cassiopeia (Ceph and Schedar) as they are about 5 degrees apart. you can then see roughly how far apart they are in your own finder and cut a circle to match. I used a compass cutter, freely available from e.g. Amazon for a few £s to cut the circles.

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wookie1965

wookie1965

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dark skies are good but there's lots to do at home too. I'd definitely remove the steel washer as this seemed to take up all the slack on the secondary tilt adjustment. don't worry too much though, just enjoy the scope! with a RDF and optical finder, locating objects where there is some light pollution is made far easier; especially so if it's a RACI finder in my experience. the small circles I gave out will work with pretty much any 9x finder or any finder with a 5 degree field using the Sky and telescope atlas.

if you are not sure what your finder field is or how far apart 5 degrees is, then you can use the two right hand stars in Cassiopeia (Ceph and Schedar) as they are about 5 degrees apart. you can then see roughly how far apart they are in your own finder and cut a circle to match. I used a compass cutter, freely available from e.g. Amazon for a few £s to cut the circles.

Yes im taking that washer off going put new plastic one on and i have sent for a 9x50 RACI finder £62 not bad as i could not get one there, i have pocket sky atlas well you know you put it back in my box lol Just want to say thank you so much again for flocking my scope just wish we could have used it next year eh.

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Moonshane

Moonshane

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ps (and this is a personal observation and not one necessarily of anyone organising the event), if any readers have a newtonian, mak, SCT (any other design than a refractor basically) and who after listening to the impromptu refractor talk kindly provided by PeaktoValley, are worried about the image in their newtonian being 'destroyed' by the secondary obstruction, fear not. you can and we do get perfectly satisfactory visual and photographic images with secondary obstructions.

the largest telescopes in the world, including the Hubble, generally have secondary obstructions and in my opinion produce pretty decent results.

my point is that there's more than one way to skin a cat. buy what you like, use and enjoy it and don't worry about what you have not got, just cherish what you have. the chances are it is going to show things you'd never have hoped for. refractors, especially the quality of those stocked by P2V are great scopes but so are many others.

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