CMAS held a public star party at my home (first star party here) aptly named Foss Hill Observatory, here in Rome. We had a great turn out of about 15 people. One new member joined us from our Facebook group. He was interested in astrophotography and got to see another member’s setup for taking photos of deep sky objects. Another formerly active member rejoined us after a hiatus doing home improvements. He brought along two telescopes he built himself, a 6″ dobsonian and a 80″ PVC pipe refractor. I didn’t get a chance to look through them, but very well constructed, using off the shelf parts. Very ingenious.
We setup on my driveway starting at 9pm with my garage and home sheltering us from occasional stiff breeze. Temperatures were warm, 60F I believe. Bugs were a problem initially but as the night went on, they vanished mostly. The moon started to come out after midnight and the party wrapped up around 12:30am. Many members drove over an hour. Very glad they were able to make it.
Many oohs and aahs with the dark sky location, with mostly unobstructed views of the sky. I hope to build a roll-off observatory in the middle of my field with a road leading to it. That way everyone has a great view of the night sky.
I had my scope setup and looked at M57 Ring Nebula, M13 Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, and an NGC object near M13. Also briefly looked at Jupiter. I spent more time talking and running the party than enjoying the sky. But I’m okay with that. I wanted everyone to have a great experience. Hopefully this is the first of many more star parties to come.
One of our members took some photos of the event.
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