On the road: Chabot Observatory Star Party, Day 1

On Friday evening, August 25, the great Chabot Observatory and Science Center in Oakland, California, hosted the first of two nights of a major star party event. Also participating were Celestron, the Los Angeles-based telescope manufacturer, and Astronomy magazine. Several hundred people flocked to Chabot, which is located high above the Bay Area along Skyline Drive in Oakland, to view through a multitude of telescopes, talk about astronomy and recent events in the science and the hobby, tour the Chabot museum, make telescopes, and generally have a good time.

Senior Editor Michael Bakich and I were proud to represent the magazine, and we talked to numerous astronomy enthusiasts during the night. From Celestron, Kevin Kawai and Daniel Mounsey were on hand and set up several computerized telescopes for visitors to use. Chabot’s telescopes were also in full swing inside two large domes and a big roll-off-roof shed; they included the historic 8-inch Clark refractor, “Leah,” which dates from 1883; the 20-inch Brashear refractor, “Rachel”; and a massive 36-inch reflector, “Nellie.”

The visitors milled around on the museum’s upper deck and peered through the scopes at a wide variety of objects, from the First Quarter Moon to bright stars like Vega to the Ring Nebula, the Wild Duck Cluster, the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Hercules Cluster, and a huge variety of other objects. Despite the moonlight, we had a beautifully clear sky and took advantage of a number of deep-sky targets.

The telescope making workshops inside gave visitors the chance to see how scopes are made from scratch, primarily with mirror grinding as the focus. Informal talks covered a variety of subjects like from the origin of the universe to the recent landing of Curiosity on Mars. All of us will be back at Chabot today for the big day of the stargaze event. More to come, and be sure to check out all my photos from Chabot in our Reader Photo Gallery.