A Souvenir to the most amazing team members in Star Party
A much awaited participation in a Event Star Party, finally materialized off village near Nagalapuram, in the vicinity of Chennai. Firstly it turned out very interesting to meet people of similar interests, each member bring up some form of twinkling energy and enthusiasm in a diverse form, it all began like a magnet collecting the ferric objects as we drift towards our destination point in three vehicles so smooth. The momentum picked up at almost 4:45pm, with 3 hours of continuous journey - it was around 8:00 pm on 25 Jan 2014 - Chennai Astronomy Club, mission was announced successful with payload deployment that constituted three Reflector Telescopes sizing 4" mirrors, a couple of astronomy Qualified 50x10 Binoculars and a refractor travel scope, including my refractor the Canon 400mm f5.6 L lens ...... at Dark Site Nagalapuram west parking lot,.
A Bonfire was lit using a dry bush, an Inaugurational ceremony...... we had our supper in great delight, as the flames subdued our eyes opened up for the dark skies...
Early marvels went with Binoculars the splendid Clusters namely - The Pleiades & The Beehive follwed by the wide brilliant diffused Orion Nebulae, and skies started to open up with a faint lane of Milky way ..., while the telescopes are busy going in for sturdy setup process, some of the older scopes already collected dew is quite disappointing, to our rescue came in a brand new Celestron 114mm Aperture 900mm focal length on equatorial mount, we polar aligned it in a matter of an hour and a half I was happy doing it, but the finder scope created a real real havoc, but to my late realization this alignment need not be too accurate,... its a learning no regrets, 20 mm eyepiece gave wider views while 10 mm gave magnified views, we had a very great time is coordination and cooperation among all members in deed we have good sighting into some new deep sky objects as the sky scrolled around the Coma berencies and 2 Galaxies near Ursa Major too, and not to ignore our great planets Jupiter with moons, Saturn with rings showed up details being closer to opposition.
As the clouds assembled with moon light to dominate the skies, the event slowly transformed into an Astrophotography session eventually followed by moonlight Trekking to beautiful water pools in Nagalapuram Hill Terrain.
Every member brought in a different form of expertise which displayed and demonstrated a passion for the subject of light in dark leaving everyone active and awake, sincerely admiring the way the event progressed right from its launch - it wrapped up with great load of cherish-able memories, wish Chennai Astronomy Club grow wide, bold and old.