Another RTMC Astronomy Expo has come and gone. This year's event was the third one for me, having also attended in 2003 and 2005. The format of RTMC is sort of a combination star party / family camp / vendor exhibit / lectures. My wife and three sons came along and for the second year, we pitched our tents directly next to the small pond. It's held at a YMCA campground near Big Bear Lake in southern California, and there are a bunch of daytime activities for the family like canoeing, archery, and rock-wall climbing. It's a great way to spend the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
The weather was not really too cooperative again this year. On Friday night it was very windy, far too much wind for any decent astroimaging as the telescope was constantly being buffeted about by wind gusts. The flying dirt was awful, although not as bad as in 2005. There were also numerous clouds to contend with, but they were moving fast with the high winds.
I was set up in the lower field along with my observing buddies Larry and Alfredo. Alfredo and I did set up and did some visual observing. A few other people came by and we shared the views, but most of the other telescopes in the camp remained covered. We started to walk up to the upper observing field, and saw a very bright meteor and heard the crowd cheering, but we never made it all the way up. The next day I heard that none of the big scopes were set up anyway and at least one vendor's tent actually blew away! I stayed up observing until about 1:00 a.m. and viewed a number of objects including M3, M13, M57, NGC 4565, M64, and Jupiter. It was too bad the wind was so awful because the seeing was almost perfect - if the scope could have been held steady it might have been a really excellent night. The wind also made it very difficult to get any sleep in the tent because it was gusting so much that it made a ton of noise.
On Saturday I attended a few workshops, went running on a mountain trail with Pam, visited the vendors, and generally had a nice day although it was still windy. It gradually got colder and by the evening it was very cold. After sitting out on the back patio of the main dining hall during the way-too-long prize drawing, we were all frozen solid. Mike Brown gave a talk on his discovery of the tenth "planet", but the hall was too full for us to get a seat and it was just too cold to sit outside, so we missed it.
Alfredo, Larry and I went up to the upper field for a while and had a good time up there. Meade was showing M51 in their 20" RCX400, sitting on a prototype MaxMount. The view through that scope was simply amazing, but there was a big line so I didn't get to enjoy it for long. We also checked in on the camp's two observatories, and visited the Celestron booth where they were demonstrating their new Sky Scout. This unit is really cool and we spent a few minutes talking to the guy who invented it. Just point it up at the sky, and it knows what you're pointing at - it will tell the name of the star and bunch of information about it. Very cool, this is going to be a useful tool for astronomers.
Later on we went back down to the lower field for some observing. The sky was clear but the temperature was soooooo cold - it was only 24 degrees! I set up for a while but it really was not too fun, despite having about 7 layers on I was still shivering. I lasted until about 1:00 a.m. and called it a night, which was hard to do since the sky was clear.
On Sunday I attended an astroimaging session. I picked up a couple of tips but was disappointed to find that the speaker had really done no preparation and didn't have an organized presentation for us. Much time was wasted with simple things like finding his files and I was surprised to see him have trouble with some basic tasks like aligning images.
I had planned to stay for the observing session on Sunday night but after two nights of very little sleep and since it was still very cold, we decided to pack it in and head for home early. I've got a ton of work to do in the next couple of days anyway. All told, it was well worth going to RTMC again this year but I wouldn't classify it as one of the best star parties I've been to.
The picture shows my scope ready for a night of photon collecting. Alfredo's scope is covered and Larry's was off to the left, out of the picture.
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