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Long night of Astronomy (Lange Nacht der Astronomie) 2022


badhex

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Hello all, 

As mentioned in other posts, I recently attended the Lange Nacht der Astronomie 2022 in Berlin, a yearly public event organised by the Observatory and Planetarium foundation. It took place at Tempelhofer Feld - the old airport airfield (and historical meeting place of the Knights Templar, hence the name). As well as the telescope area, there was a mobile planetarium, various stalls of related organisations, kids activities (bottle rockets!) food stalls and a bar.

I'd planned to take larger twin-scope setup on the Skytee, but due to heavy cloud I significantly cut down the equipment to pretty much my standard travel kit (ZS73, Scopetech mount Zero, Gitzo 5 series) including Herschel wedge for potential solar viewing. Still, assuming the weather cleared up I thought it would be a good opportunity to show what can be done with a very portable setup that fits in a backpack.

Although things didn't start too well with the clouds, it did start to clear up enough for some intermittent solar observing, and by about 6pm there was a steady stream of people queueing at my scope. Although I'm pretty much a noob myself with solar, I pointed out sunspots and answered a few questions - most people were shocked to find out that the tiny black dots were not in fact dirt on the eyepiece, but giant areas of magnetic activity the size of the earth!

As it grew dark, full cloud cover had returned and it there were now so like others I trained the scope on Fernsehturm, Berlin's huge DDR-era TV tower, and people were still very impressed. There were queues the whole time at every scope, and lots of questions about equipment and how to get into astronomy and so on. We got a bit of a break later, long enough to view the double double which people were very interested in, a very low and fuzzy Jupiter and a smoky, atmospheric moon.

In terms of other equipment around, there were the usual suspects - a few huge light buckets, at least three C11s, a couple of maks, a Coronado PST, a Unistellar.
The standout for me though was a Zeiss APQ belonging to the Wilhelm Förster observatory amateurs club - although sadly it apparently spends most of its life in a locked box!

Apart from the Zeiss, I did not really get much chance to look through the other scopes as I was on full time scope assistant duty. It was heartening to hear people's surprise firstly at how capable my small ZS73 was, and also that quite a number of people said they preferred the view through it more than many of the other giant scopes! Everyone remarked at how sharp the image was (except one other scope owner who complained that the image of the sun was too small, and I should go and look through a C11 😅).

After talking and answering questions pretty much none stop for 6-7 hours I was pretty exhausted so we called it a day at about midnight. There must have easily been 200+ people stopping by over the course of the day and night. 

Overall it was a great day, quick shoutout to @moonsafari and @RaspberryJamBerlin who have newly joined us here after my SGL sales pitch 🙂 I've included a few pictures below. (If you look carefully I can be spotted in blue shorts and shades, gesticulating wildly 😂)

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Edited by badhex
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33 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Just thought I would also say that in the background of your wild gesticulating picture there is an amazing old plane.

Flying fortress perhaps?

M

I think you'll find it's a C-54 Skymaster ... 😉

Not as bad a mistake as someone on another forum I'm on who posted a photo today of a C-130 Hercules and said it was an Avro Lancaster ... 🤣

Edited by Steve Ward
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It's a C-54 Skymaster, specifically one of the ones flown during the Berlin Blockade in 1948-1949. They are something of a Berlin legend, not only for providing the vital supplies West Berlin needed during that time, but also because of the Candy Bomber /  Rosinenbomber / Onkel Wackelflügel US pilot Gail Halvorsen who dropped sweets for children in West Berlin. Apparently he would 'wiggle' his wings to let children know that it was his plane. 

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12 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

I think you'll find it's a C-54 Skymaster ... 😉

Not as bad a mistake as someone on another fourum I'm on who posted a photo today of a C-130 Hercules and said it was an Avro Lancaster ... 🤣

hah, beat me to it!

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