A rare occurrence for a WAS Perseids Picnic – a clear sky!
What a treat we were in for as we gathered at the WAS Observatory at Woodrow High House on this unusually warm August evening.
And as the Sun was setting, a waxing quarter Moon hovered low in the south. Before it set, Kevin and Sandy were busily setting up the Society’s 101mm Borg Refractor to demonstrate the video imaging technique for capturing a Moon photo. Sandy held an impromptu Practical Class to demonstrate the use of SharpCap camera control software, then Autostakkert4 to stack the best two hundred images to minimise the influence of atmospheric distortions, and finally Registax6 to sharpen the resultant image.
So, as we waited for darkness to descend, it was time for the picnic!
It soon got dark. Several members as usual, brought along their telescopes. In particular Jon Jewitt and Shawn Macfarlane had recently acquired ZWO SeeStar S50 Smart Telescopes and were keen to demonstrate this recent innovation in Astroimaging. Another impromptu Practical Class! The images they created were indeed amazing – relatively little effort in locating targets and astonishingly fine images with such short exposure times. Even the multitude of satellites we saw didn’t spoil the images!
But what of the Perseids themselves? Well there were plenty of them! By 10:30 Chris Teal was up to 16 that he’d seen alone, but everyone saw some. Interestingly, Kevin had set up an automated camera and took almost five hundred 10 second images during the evening, unfortunately so far finding only one small meteor!!
On the other hand he did score in quite another rather spectacular way – an AURORA! Wow!
Over thirty members attended this wonderful astronomical, instructional and social gathering. Added to this we welcomed guests and potential new members, and were also visited by some of the youngsters and their instructors attending a Woodrow High House residential course. Altogether maybe fifty people.
As the evening got late and rather cooler, high clouds began to gather, but it was still possible to enjoy the night sky. A night as good as this, in the company of like-minded enthusiasts, was a reminder of why we all enjoy this hobby so much.
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