Observing with Street Lights

Observing with Street Lights
Dark sky sites not always necessary to see the Milky Way (This image was taken ouside of a B&B in Julian, CA)

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Missed SAS conference (we were on vacation, darn!), but good times at Black Star Canyon star party

Greetings from Palmia Observatory,

Finally, we had a chance to do some astro viewing at the Black Star Canyon OCA event, but first, a few other introductory topics.  It was good after being away on vacation to pack up the scope, but I recalled I had to miss the Society of Astronomical Sciences (SAS) annual conference.  Darn it, the conference in Ontario, where hundreds of a amateurs gather to review the latest news about amateur contributions to real science, etc, just happened to be scheduled right in the middle of our vacation cruise.  I attended the conference last year and met

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Offsite observing on the Danube River and puzzling sign showing maybe? special relativity?

Well, as you know we are off site and not at the observatory, but instead are in Nurenberg, which was the final destination of our Danube river cruise, which started in Budapest.  Wow, it has been a fantastic journey with fun on the river, great history, great people, and great food, but we are ready to be home again.

We didn't do any astro observing, not because we didn't look up, but mostly because we had high clouds at night.  We were able to see Jupiter and Venus, but not a lot of other stars.  Surprisingly, there seemed to be opportunities of dark skies, but the clouds