hi everyone,

some pics from my travels in California are in the ARCTURUS folder on the site. It's a mix of observatories visited/seen and various shots of the Riverside Astronomical Society's RTMC 2004 event over Memorial Weekend in May. Heading out the door again shortly so I've not really written up much on the astronomy side of things except captioned the pictures. Hope to do a write-up for the July/August edition of Arcturus.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/viewFiles.php?folder_id=3

best of luck to anyone travelling abroad for the transit!

John
SDAS

Nice pictures John but the Artcurus folder really isn't the place for them!

Moving them to their own folder now, will post link when I'm done.

BB

John's pics can now be found here:

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/vi...les.php?folder_id=26

Bart,
Any chance we could have a "green with envy" emoticon! :wink:

Serioulsy John, I'm looking forward to your article.
I'd love to head to one of the bigh star parties in the US sometime.

Michael

hi Michael,

(thanks for moving the pics for me Bart -- I had forgotten about the Astrophotography sub directory being there).

an American star party is definitely well worth visiting as there are many, many trade stands and lots of second-hand gear at knockdown prices. Saturday morning featured a swap meet -- C90 for 250 dollars on a clock drive table tripod with many extras, C8 for 550 dollars -- amazing!

picked up an equatorial head and tripod for 40 dollars and am not sure how to get it home! Lots of books too.

I didn't really see much of interest in the talks to be honest -- many were telescope technique/making relating or dwelt on the finer points of instrumentation. There were useful workshops though on CCD astronomy and supernova hunting. The only two talks I went to were Phil Plait's (the "bad astronomer") which was excellent and one on Sunday morning on the green flash (no, not the baddie Marvel comic character!)

talk to y'all soon,

John

picked up an equatorial head and tripod for 40 dollars and am not sure how to get it home! Lots of books too.

I went up to the airport and had a chat to the airport police the other night.

For small telescopes and binoculars you are probably ok taking them on as hand luggage, not wanting the baggage staff playing football with sensitive optics is a good enough reason. Though you should have documentation describing exactly what it is you are carrying for the folks at the x-ray machine.

For mounts etc. they will have to go in the hold. Obviously they should be well packed, but you should also have documentation with you explaining what they are. Tripods are probably obvious enough. An equatorial head however may raise eyebrows.

Cheers,
~Al