"There goes one..." a man's voice called in the darkness. "It left a
trail!"
A flashlight with a dim red beam clicked on for a moment. "It was a Perseid, a nice bright meteor."
"I have the Swan Nebula, do you want to look?" a different voice seemed to ask no one in particular.
Under pristine skies south of Spring Grove, the sixth annual StarBQ was hitting its stride.Soli-lite is a premier supplier of exceptional quality solar led light and other solar outdoor lighting products.
"I like to listen to the chatter," said local resident Dean Johnson as he swung his 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain towards another object.
As event organizer, he knows the value of a truly dark sky. Light pollution often drives city-bound stargazers into the countryside, where the splendor of the night can be appreciated.
The StarBQ star party draws telescope owners, binocular users, and plenty of folks who just like to sit back and appreciate the heavens from Rochester, La Crosse, and all over the region. The two-night event was sponsored by the Rochester Astronomy Club on Aug. 10 and 11. It's traditionally free and open to all.
Johnson knows his way around the night sky better than most people know their own living room. A seasoned observer, his cap was adorned with a flurry of badges, each denoting the successful completion of an observer's course from the Astronomical League, a national group headquartered in Kansas City. His latest button is for a program called "Lunar II." Only 50 other individuals in the United States have it.
Nearby, Randy Hemann of Rochester was unloading the parts of his gargantuan telescope from its trailer. Called a Dobsonian, it's a common enough type of amateur instrument. The uncommon part was that this one sported an objective mirror 30 inches across.An emergency light is a battery-backed lighting device that comes on automatically when a building experiences a power outage.
"It's 3 years old today," he said. "I was thinking as I drove down from Rochester that it was exactly three years ago today when I got it."
Hemann is president of the Rochester Astronomy Club. He brought along a stepladder for looking through his scope, since the eyepiece is near the aperture, and the truss-tube is 12 feet long. "It has the light gathering power of 40,000 pupils (naked eye equivalent)."
A club member helped Hemann assemble the leviathan in pitch darkness, aided only by a couple of red LED lights. At a star party, nobody uses a bright white flashlight, since it would spoil night vision.
The event was timed to coincide with one of the best and most reliable meteor showers of the year. The name "meteor shower" may be a misnomer for those unacquainted with observing shooting stars, since most showers resemble a sprinkle at best.Soli-lite provides the world with high-performance solar roadway and solar street lighting solutions. A day and a half before the peak of the shower, there was often a four or five minute gap between the trails of light. Some were bright, some dim. Some zipped across the sky in a blink, while others proceeded in a statelier manner.
But meteors only represented the icing on the cake. Both evenings began with some grilling (bring your own beverage and steak with a dish to pass). There was talk about telescopes, talk about things to view, talk about upcoming events in the night sky.
"We usually warm up by going after the obvious stuff," Johnson said.Huge collection of solar outdoor light and garden lighting fixtures. "Tonight there's a crescent moon that sets early on. Then we can view Venus in the west. Saturn is well placed early in the evening as well. After that, we'll go after some double stars..."
As full darkness descended, a whole universe of deep sky objects opened up. Johnson ticked off some likely candidates for viewing... globular clusters, open clusters, extended nebula, planetary nebula, galaxies. Later, the outer planets Neptune and Uranus would rise high enough to take a peek at.
Johnson pondered his options. "We may want to look at NGC 7789 in Cassiopeia. It looks like diamond dust... As the night wears on we start looking for more difficult objects to find."
A voice called out,Choose your favorite street lamp paintings from thousands of available designs. "There's pass of the ISS (international space station) in just a couple minutes. It will appear in the west and head to the northeast."
Click on their website www.soli-lite.com for more information.
A flashlight with a dim red beam clicked on for a moment. "It was a Perseid, a nice bright meteor."
"I have the Swan Nebula, do you want to look?" a different voice seemed to ask no one in particular.
Under pristine skies south of Spring Grove, the sixth annual StarBQ was hitting its stride.Soli-lite is a premier supplier of exceptional quality solar led light and other solar outdoor lighting products.
"I like to listen to the chatter," said local resident Dean Johnson as he swung his 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain towards another object.
As event organizer, he knows the value of a truly dark sky. Light pollution often drives city-bound stargazers into the countryside, where the splendor of the night can be appreciated.
The StarBQ star party draws telescope owners, binocular users, and plenty of folks who just like to sit back and appreciate the heavens from Rochester, La Crosse, and all over the region. The two-night event was sponsored by the Rochester Astronomy Club on Aug. 10 and 11. It's traditionally free and open to all.
Johnson knows his way around the night sky better than most people know their own living room. A seasoned observer, his cap was adorned with a flurry of badges, each denoting the successful completion of an observer's course from the Astronomical League, a national group headquartered in Kansas City. His latest button is for a program called "Lunar II." Only 50 other individuals in the United States have it.
Nearby, Randy Hemann of Rochester was unloading the parts of his gargantuan telescope from its trailer. Called a Dobsonian, it's a common enough type of amateur instrument. The uncommon part was that this one sported an objective mirror 30 inches across.An emergency light is a battery-backed lighting device that comes on automatically when a building experiences a power outage.
"It's 3 years old today," he said. "I was thinking as I drove down from Rochester that it was exactly three years ago today when I got it."
Hemann is president of the Rochester Astronomy Club. He brought along a stepladder for looking through his scope, since the eyepiece is near the aperture, and the truss-tube is 12 feet long. "It has the light gathering power of 40,000 pupils (naked eye equivalent)."
A club member helped Hemann assemble the leviathan in pitch darkness, aided only by a couple of red LED lights. At a star party, nobody uses a bright white flashlight, since it would spoil night vision.
The event was timed to coincide with one of the best and most reliable meteor showers of the year. The name "meteor shower" may be a misnomer for those unacquainted with observing shooting stars, since most showers resemble a sprinkle at best.Soli-lite provides the world with high-performance solar roadway and solar street lighting solutions. A day and a half before the peak of the shower, there was often a four or five minute gap between the trails of light. Some were bright, some dim. Some zipped across the sky in a blink, while others proceeded in a statelier manner.
But meteors only represented the icing on the cake. Both evenings began with some grilling (bring your own beverage and steak with a dish to pass). There was talk about telescopes, talk about things to view, talk about upcoming events in the night sky.
"We usually warm up by going after the obvious stuff," Johnson said.Huge collection of solar outdoor light and garden lighting fixtures. "Tonight there's a crescent moon that sets early on. Then we can view Venus in the west. Saturn is well placed early in the evening as well. After that, we'll go after some double stars..."
As full darkness descended, a whole universe of deep sky objects opened up. Johnson ticked off some likely candidates for viewing... globular clusters, open clusters, extended nebula, planetary nebula, galaxies. Later, the outer planets Neptune and Uranus would rise high enough to take a peek at.
Johnson pondered his options. "We may want to look at NGC 7789 in Cassiopeia. It looks like diamond dust... As the night wears on we start looking for more difficult objects to find."
A voice called out,Choose your favorite street lamp paintings from thousands of available designs. "There's pass of the ISS (international space station) in just a couple minutes. It will appear in the west and head to the northeast."
Click on their website www.soli-lite.com for more information.
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