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Peak Star Party Lives Again! 21 - 24 October


jamespels

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More observing possible tonight - so far this has been a well organised, inclusive, very friendly and enjoyable event. There was a 'bottle rocket' competition and a telescope making workshop this afternoon. My 8yr old son made a simple refractor that we have been observing Jupiter with this evening. How good is that? Well his middle name is Gallileo. No - I'm kidding. But now hat I think about it - that would have been pretty cool.....

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.227129,-1.862605

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Clouds have rolled in a bit now so I'm just leaving the scope taking a few darks, but a very enjoyable day and a few hours of clear again this evening.

Typically this evening my PHD decided to play up so I've been taking 150 second unguided on M33.

I could see the Andromea galaxy with the naked eye earlier which is a first for me.

There have been some great trade stands and interesting speakers today and a really great barbecue.

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I day visited on Saturday and had a great time. Nice meeting you James.

Bottle rockets were amazing, after that my son made a 50mm refractor. Ian Poyser is a very nice bloke. Very funny as well!

I came back later on my own for the guided sky tour. Learnt to recognize a few more constellations and star hopping.

Saw several targets on various scopes, thank you all people who let me. Especially memorable was Ring Nebula on a 250mm Dob.

My bins also got a good view of M31, Coathanger among others.

All in all I find it very well organised, lots of activities, and it helps being 40 minutes drive from Sheffield!

Next year I plan to camp, plenty of time to save up for a smaller tent and good mat.

Thank you James and others.

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Well, im back from my 2 day trip to PSP2011,

firstly i just want to thank James and a good few other people for making this such a very well organised and well run event, also a big thankyou to moonshane for letting me have some excellent views through the huge dob, and lots of excellent dso advice, shane your a true gent.

My 180 pro got some great views of jupiter, managed to briefly get to x300 but the conditions were very unstable, M42 neb was a lovely sight with the big mak, at low power, between my 3 scopes and shane`s dob, got to view a good amount of objects new to me, so all in all a great first star party,

a big thanks to all the people that i met from here, top class people

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Congrats to James Pels & those who were inolved with psp should be proud. Thoroughly enjoyed my visit and meeting those wth scopes there. Great talk on neo's.Next year I will bring some kit & an urn so that I can have some coffee!!

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Had a great time, learnt an absolute ton. Highlight of the weekend was my 10 year old son holding a piece of Mars owned by the very patient and knowledgeable Paul Cannon. And of course i got a go as well.

Big big thanks to Paul, James, Paul and Paul for organizing and running a great event. And of course all the people from here i met. Cant wait for the next one.

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Brilliant weekend

Great talks during the day - and enough good observing on Saturday evening to make us glad we were there. Prof Ian Morison is an absolute hero for his talk and for enthusiasm for sharing his knowledge and his scope time.

I don't know who owned the ~15" dob on the lower field, but we loved the views of Jupiter - Thanks!

Finally, a big THANKS to James Pels for organising and for the speakers too

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PSP was great. Many thanks to James and the whole team for all your hard work. It was well worth it. Friday night was a great session which we didn't think would happen until the cloud broke at 1:30am. Saturday was ok until the cloud rolled in.

Highlights for me were seeing Jupiter moon transits on both nights; Shane being kind enough to let me see some great targets in his Monster Dob (and reaching me the dark art of collimating) and meeting some great people (Hello Northern Nutter!).

I also know what to do on cloudy nights now - work on the ultimate bottle rocket design!

This weekend also convinced me to get rid of the GoTo and go manual.

Thanks again to everyone involved.

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Just returned homefrom my 8th star party this year. Three nights of viewing, first night didn't start til around 2.30 so most people missd 4 hours of clarity. Thanks Philthy for waking me up :) I think 90% were at their first star party so it bodes well for the hobby.

I must thank the organisers, such enthusiasm that's rare to see. Great people, great company.

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Like everyone else i would like to say a HUGE thanks to all involved in the organising!!!!, i loved every minute of it and got myself a scope!!!! woop, now to try use it seen as tho the other half was doing most of the playing around on Saturday night and then we chose not to get it out on the Sunday coz of the wind. Thank you to all the people who kindly talked to us and who knew me but i didnt know them, i should have known that would happen with having a proper photo up as my pic lol. Anyway thanks again, im off to get a lovely warm shower and have a few hours kip in a real bed, god i did miss that. see you all at the next local one hopefully xx:-))

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super event and very well organised and they even set up some decent viewing conditions too! thanks to James and the rest of the team for such supreme efforts.

this was the first time my dob had been out on a trip away from the garden and I am glad it worked out so well. I think I can get all my stuff in next time if I take out the front seat although hopefully I can convince someone to come with me and avoid the need for this.

great to put some faces to names and meet some fantastic people (too many to mention over the event!!). I helped a few people to (hopefully!) dispel the myths about collimation being anything to worry about and then realised I hadn't done mine for the second night and struggled a bit - well it took about three minutes instead of the usual 30 seconds anyway!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the views as much as I enjoyed them and enjoyed showing people things like they had perhaps not seen them before.

for me highlights were NGC 281 the Pacman Nebula which I have never seen before, seeing the whole Veil complex in good detail, including NGC 6979 Pickering's Triangular Wisp (never seen before), M1 the Crab Nebula with knotting and detail in the centre, NGC 6888 the Crescent Nebula and without doubt for me the most stunning views ever of M42 the Orion Nebula helped with the UHC filter. The nebula filled the whole of the field of my 26mm Nagler and there was knotting and detail all the way in to the Trapezium (within which I saw all 6 of the visible stars). NGC 869/884 the Double Cluster was surprisingly good with hundreds more stars than at home and simply filled the field with stars and background peppering.The

NGC 6826, the Blinking Planetary was also quite entertaining!

There's so much to list though although I have just realised that I didn't even see a new Messier object! it was interesting to see how different objects looked as the seeing and transparency changed/deteriorated. Many of the globular clusters looked just like at home but the open clusters were much better.

The main bonus was that I didn't break my back lifting the dob and it was actually more manageable than I feared in the end!

I'll certainly be back and making more trips into the darkness of Derbyshire in the near future.

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Big thank you to James for organizing the event and the rest of the crew for keeping us entertained with talks and other events through out the day. The weather although breezy and some times cloudy was way better than I have had at home in a while so chuffed to get some observing in away from the city lights. HUGE THANK YOU!!! to Shane for not just bringing the 16" light bucket but also having the knowledge to show some great sights through it. M42, M13 and the veil were simply mind blowing. :) Was a pleasure to finally meet SGL members and attend a star party.

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Hello everyone :(

Hope you all got back safely and had a wonderful time, thanks to all who made my first star party one I shall never forget!

An especially big thanks to James and crew for putting on a very professional event which I shall be looking forward to attending next year when that is finalised. :)

I stayed until this morning which was worthwhile as we were greeted by some wonderful clear patches from about 11pm onwards.

I counted no less than 15 meteors over the evening and even one flew in front of the Orion Nebula whilst I was looking at it with the Vixen and 13mm eyepiece.

Both Stu and I were quite surprised as we were both looking through our scopes as it passed.

Roll on next year!

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Indeed we did Mark, and very nice it was too, as was the one through the double cluster as I was observing that. Thanks for your company last night, glad we didn't get blown away as seemed likely at some points in the night! Shane, you made the right decision, the big dob would have taken off!

Thanks James, Paul, Paul and others for organising such a fabulous event. When I 'signed up' back in Feb, I had no idea it would be such a big thing, with so many organised activities. Talks were very good, and the bottle rockets highly entertaining.

Great to meet so many SGL'ites there and put names to faces, looking forward to the next time.

My only regret....... Sleeping through Friday night's clear spell...aaarrrggghh! Next time a big 'wake me up if it clears' sign will be on the tent! Glad to have got some decent views on the other two nights though.

Cheers

Stu

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Yup, really enjoyed it too! I'd like to echo the comments for the organisers; thanks for a great, very well organised weekend. I wish I'd been there earlier on Saturday as I missed the talks and rocket bottles but we were a bit late setting off and then got a bit lost :) The Sunday afternoon talks were really good though. The one on Quasars was particularly good so cheers Andrew.

Got some good views on and off on Saturday. Glad I got a quick peek at the double cluster through Shane's 16" Dob, among others. I didn't get round to meeting everyone, probably about half of you all so sorry if I missed you. I was showing a really nice fella Jupiter through the f/4 and got chatting and it turned out to be the farm owner (sorry I can't remember his name :() who seemed really pleased about how things were going. He commented on what a good crowd we were :(

I got some nice views through the f/4 which I was using for visual as it was a bit breezy for imaging. I should have cleaned the optics on the Dob as it wasn't performing at it's best. Thanks to the folks that stopped for a chat :p

Mark, glad the diagonal was ok for you. Jules, nice to finally meet you too mate, meet up with you soon.

Thanks again!

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Brlliant, absolutely brilliant weekend thanks... within two minutes of arrival, and even before we had pitched the tent, we were invited to look at some sun spots through a scope (with appropriate filter fitted which I have forgot the name of)

It just got better and better as night fell, I won't forget the buzz of excitement as people started emerging from their tents fine tuning their instruments in antiscipation for the nights viewing... red lights everywhere!

I learnt so much and saw lots of new things... Thanks to Nick (SAS)for basically introducing me to star maps and showing me a zillion different sights through his Dob (including his poundshop handle) Thanks to Darren for letting me see what Jupiter looks like through his top quality kit (I must get one now) great to meet Mike, Graham, John, Phil and everyone else who was sooooooooooooo helpful and friendly.

Let me know when the booking forms are out for next year James coz I will be there for sure.

Brilliant weekend! :)

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That reminds me, probably one of the most memorable things over the weekend was my first view through a PST. Amazing seeing all those prominences, so much detail I can really see the appeal.

Might well be next on the wish list... Could be slightly easier to get past SWMBO as it involves being warm in the sunshine rather than freezing your nethers off :-)

Stu

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