With over 16 inches of rain in August, the skies have not been very kind to Northwest Florida astronomers. However, they cleared enough during the monthly meeting to provide our visiting observers with plenty of targets to view. Frank Atchison set up his 8″ SCT and Prof. Tony Russo had opened the dome and started the cool down process in anticipation of the evenings guests. While the equipment acclimated, the meeting was brought to order and the normal club business was taken care of.
Members and guest observers await dark skies.
Professor Russo brings the meeting to order.
Tom Haugh presented his postponed ASCOM talk and by then the skies were dark and the meeting was adjourned. While the guest observers went outside, Tony aligned the college 18″ Criterion and brought the system on-line. The guest observers then made the rounds between the 8″ outside and the classroom where Tony was displaying the near real-time objects that he was imaging. One of the first, was The Ring Nebula (M 57) in Lyra.