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Jim Mayes
When I arrived at the science museum around 5:00 the skies were mostly cloudy with a few holes revealing blue sky. As more club members arrived more clouds arrived too. A television crew was there and took video and interviewed people as we waited under the opaque sky. Finally as the time for the total eclipse drew near the clouds thinned and we were able to occasionally let museum visitors get the chance to view the event through the telescopes and binoculars we had assembled, though the view was lessened by high clouds. As the night went on the viewing got better but never achieved a level one would be able to say was good. Though this was billed as a total eclipse at no time did I see the entire moon covered by the umbra of the Earth’s shadow. As more of the moon reappeared, the lines waiting to view through our instruments shorten. Before 9:30 the museum crowd was gone and we were off to IHOP for nourishment.
Addendum
Since filing my observing report, Charlie Fredrickson, whose knowledge of astronomy is deeper than mine, informed me that there was indeed a total eclipse. As is common during a lunar eclipse, the limb closest to the edge of the umbra is brighter. During this eclipse the umbra was very close to the edge of the moon making the limb even brighter. As viewing conditions were so poor I was not able to detect any darkening of the limb I was misled into believing that the umbra did not cover the entire moon. This, however, was not the case.
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Roland Culberson
Saturday afternoon around 3:00 PM, I walked out the front door to look and see what the sky was doing in anticipation of the Lunar Eclipse that was to happen later this evening. Needless to say, I was immediately depressed at the site. All over from my vantage point was nothing but UGLY gray sky and it was littered with clouds. I had just gotten a call from Jim Kimball, who told me he was planning to image the event, but was seeing the same situation. I had been looking forward to this for a while now, and this nasty mess overhead was nothing short of a killer of the planned “Luna-see” event at the museum.
After a period of mumbling under my breath, I called our resident cloud expert, George DeBarros (AKA: Mr. Cloud) and asked him what he was going to do about this. His answer was not very positive, and he said he was leaning toward not even going. Well, when Mr. Cloud throws in the towel, that pretty much clinches it, doesn’t it? He did mention there was a small blue spot in the north, but nothing more.
I then called the eternal optimist, Jim Mayes, and found that he was not at home. Got that silly electronic voice telling me to leave a message. Looked at the watch again, walked back outside and saw the same ugliness as earlier, but as it was now about 4:30. I figured that if Jim had gone, I may as well go and give him some company. I hooked up the trailer and off I went.
Arriving at the museum, I found the gate open and Saturn was on the grounds. OK, so it was a white Saturn and not a planet, but a good sign nonetheless. I found Jim sulking at one of the picnic tables (or maybe he was catching a few winks), and no one else around. After picking what proved to be a pretty poor parking spot (and an even poorer observing point, as it turned out), we proceed to make the cow a widow (shot the bull).
After a bit, the news guys from 25 News came in and parked up by the back of the building, and proceeded to run their antenna up, as if they were oblivious to the clouds. A few other club members, OK, two other club members showed up around then, Dan Wickles, and Ben Kolstad with his wife. Then came Bill Chazotte and his wife.
At this point, we voted to call and harass Mr. Cloud, since he had no intention of coming to get harassed in person. We basically told him that he needed to get on down here. He showed up about a half-hour later.
Now to the good stuff...
The news guys wanted a picture of a telescope, but the only things set up so far were binoculars on various mountings. Somehow, I got nominated to set a scope up for them to take some pictures of. My intention for this occasion was to use the 18” StarMaster, as this was an early event, and would be relatively low in the sky. With the concern of weather that was ominous, I decided to go with the 5” refractor, as it would be a lot easier to get through the door in the event of “precipitating” disaster. I had put the tripod out a while earlier, and was on hold up to this point. I had walked it out, plopped it down as “this looks about right to be north”, and had been content to stand and use it as a leaning post. After setting the mount and scope up, the news guys took their pictures. I was then nominated for the speaking part (Who’s bright idea was THAT?) and was briefly interviewed by the camera guy. Yes, this was indeed an informative and concise (just like the advertisements for the news all say) interview. “Yes, this is a refractor, it is a 5” one, light goes in here, and comes out back there.
Now that this was done, we were beginning to see a bit of diffused light in the general direction we thought the moon to be in. Was it possible? Were we about to get a break?
In fact we did. For about the next hour we were playing “dodge’m” with the clouds, and giving views of a somewhat obscured moon. We had several large groups of folks come through before the clouds won again for about a half-hour. At that point we entered totality. The moon didn’t, we did.
At about 10 to 8, the clouds broke slightly, and it was now clearer than it had been up ‘til now. You could actually see the entire disc of the moon, and it was well into being covered with shadow, showing some dark copper-ish color, and looking FINE! The visitors were not the only people who were ecstatic at this point, there were more than a half dozen or so of us who were elated as well. We ran through all the folks who came out (several hundred I think) and continued to have clouds go in and out, but it turned out to be quite a good time. As the evening progressed, Larry Nadel and Jeff Nowak came in and set up also. (Hope I didn’t leave anyone out this time)
Now back to the things that don’t matter...
George “Mr. Cloud” DeBarros made it, and was going to set his scope up but low and behold, he seemed to have forgotten a small item necessary to use the scope. I think it would be called a MOUNT. Had the scope, had the tripod, and even had the EP’s, but nothing to hold the scope to the tripod… He said something about being rushed...
And that perfect spot I had plopped the tripod for my mount down on Well, if I had planned and measured to get the scope PRECISELY in line with the power pole that became an obstruction to my view early on, I could not have hit the mark any better! My “guess-timation” of north wasn’t too bad though. I never polar aligned, nor really did any balancing (other than a half memory of where the counterweight and scope plate normally sit) but was able to maintain excellent tracking throughout the event. Fortunately, the moon had risen above the pole by the time the big event started to become very visible. However, those stinkin’ wires attached to it remained in sight for another half-hour!
We went, we saw, and as usual, we had a great time!
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Ben Kolstad
Well, sometimes the pursuit of amateur astronomy leads into other areas. There's a saying among the members of the astronomy club of which I am a member (the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches), to the effect that, "in this hobby, you've got to be an optimist."
Roland Culberson first pointed this out to me back in September, when I showed up at the first of the Free Friday events at the South Florida Science Museum. During September and October, the Museum offers free admittance on Fridays, and invites club members to set up telescopes on the back lawn, where any museum guest who is so inclined, may peruse the assorted optical instruments pointed at various parts of the heavens.
This year, of course, most of the scopes, and hence most of the club members' minds, were pointing toward Mars. But on that first night, most scopes were pointing nowhere, since those who needed to polar align couldn't see Polaris, and those who didn't need to polar align still needed something to point at! Nevertheless, a nice crowd of optimistic club members showed up, as did a surprising number of optimistic visitors, all drawn to the possibility of a heavenly show. And, between cloud bouts (fortunately for all concerned, no cloudbursts!), their curiosities were satisfied or stimulated, appetites whetted or sharpened, and the stars (and clouds) rolled on, unaffected.
This sequence of events continued through much of the series, with progressively less cloudy nights alternating with actual rain, when very few club members showed up (so I hear--I myself stayed away from those nights).
Last night, however, separated the true optimists from the rest of the crowd. The Science Museum had scheduled a total lunar eclipse, with real green cheese and the enthusiastic participation of the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches. Everyone was invited to share in the fun. I photocopied some maps of the moon to pass out, brought my Sky & Tel with its chart of lunar features to observe and try to estimate brightnesses for, and generally did my best to prepare for an instructive, as well as entertaining, evening.
However, as seems to be her wont, Mother Nature seemed displeased. Apparently she takes umbrage (get it?) at the museum, where much of her handiwork is on display, apparently taking her cooperation for granted. It rained all day in Fort Lauderdale and Boca, prompting those of us who live to the south of the museum to consider not showing up. Frequent visits to noaa.gov showed, however, that the cloud cover was patchy, and the rain seemed to be confining itself to a line somewhat south of West Palm Beach. Taking Roland's dictum to heart, I resolved to remain optimistic.
So I loaded my parallelogram binocular mount and my Fujinon 10x42 binoculars into the van, cajoled my lovely wife into accompanying me, and trundled off to the back lawn of the museum, where we were met with a grand total of two other club members (Jim Mayes, the coordinator of the public events, and Roland Culberson, who seems to show up for everything, rain or shine -- apparently that's how he became VP of the club in the past: he was absent when they nominated him, and absent when they voted, and now he shows up for everything to make sure nothing like that ever happens again!). Jim and Roland, proving that, though they may be optimists, they are no dummies, were as realistic in assessing the skies as I was. Neither of them had bothered to set up more than tripods yet.
However, the curtains in the skies kept drawing back and falling, revealing now half of the lovely Cassiopeia, now the lucida of either Lyra or Cygnus (there were so few holes in the clouds I never could determine which). Things, it seemed, might not be so bad. And sure enough, at one point those who needed to actually caught sight of Polaris, revealed for long enough to take a fix and align their mounts.
And over the course of the evening, several other members rolled in, until eventually we had at least four telescopes and four pairs of binoculars on mounts, plus several freehand pairs of binoculars (by the time all the club members who showed up were there, I was too busy to count, being surrounded by optimistic visitors eager for a glimpse of this exciting spectacle). The one participant who counted, however, was nowhere to be seen as the penumbral phase was scheduled to begin around moonrise, 17:27 EST. The clouds to the east were thick, although at the zenith (after it got dark enough, of course) we could make out several of the brighter stars.
The moon, though, remained shy.
Her first appearance was at 18:33 by my watch, which is set every night to the signals from the NIST time center in Boulder, Colorado. However, there was no need for such precision last night. The umbral stage of the eclipse began with very little fanfare, noticed by a club member named Bill, who brought a pair of 20x80 binoculars on a homemade tripod and pipe-fitting mount. The tripod looked sturdy enough to hold at least a 10-inch reflector, and Bill said that he usually uses it for a wedge-mounted telescope.
Throughout the evening, the foreground clouds conspired to blot out the moon, making it difficult, at best, to determine any advancing stages of the eclipse, other than the fact that the southern limb never seemed to completely dim, while the high clouds made it just as difficult to tell whether the moon was actually dark, or merely experiencing a cloudular eclipse. But as totality faded, so to speak, the brightening of the moon, combined with its higher elevation and subsequently reduced cloud-caused dimming, made it retrospectively obvious that this eclipse was in fact caused by the Earth's shadow, and not the clouds in our eyes.
The local news team must have been as optimistic as we were, because they sent a camera crew out to blind us. A newspaper photographer shooting stills also did her level best to cause children, teetering near the edge of a very expensive refractor, to tear down the whole setup with her disorienting flashbulb. Nevertheless, I appreciate the efforts to publicize the event, so I can't complain too loudly. And, I think it's safe to say that a good time was had by all. Despite the lack of cooperation at the weather department, I got to know some of my fellow club members that I hadn't known at all before, and scores of visitors (I'd guesstimate 150 or more) got to view a total lunar eclipse, at times.
However, the throngs died away rapidly after totality, despite the fascinating (and s-l-o-w) re-emergence of the bright moon, beginning with the southern limb, and continuing on, I must suppose, until it was once again near magnitude -12 or so (with the moon near apogee, I imagine it's not as bright as its maximal near -13). I, however, must only suppose that Luna completely re-emerged, since by the time that event would have occurred I was at the local diner, sharing the stories with a few of the club members, united by our now-confirmed optimistic stance. And on the drive home, the clouds tightened up, until we were driving through a good little cloudburst just as we rolled into Boca!
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Fred Lehman
After several phone calls to various club members who each told me that the skies were not good enough to risk my life on the treacherous I-95 just to view the eclipse through the clouds, I packed my things into my car and headed west on Alligator Alley. By the time we got to US Highway 27, we found we had left the both the clouds and haze behind and skies above us were perfectly clear. We headed north and pulled off the road at the first wayside we encountered.
I've always loved this place because it is close to town, yet it is dark enough for really good astrophotography. It has one drawback, and it is a serious one: mosquitoes. Not just a lot of mosquitoes, but so many that you actually breath them in if your mouth is open too wide. Since I-75 is already known as "Alligator Alley", I believe that I should start a grass-roots movement to rename US-27 as "Mosquito Alley".
Anyhow, we watched the eclipse through the end of totality, at which point we admitted defeat to the mosquitoes, packed our stuff, and headed for home. I just wished I had remembered to bring my camera.
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