2004- 2nd Star Party
This year's star party was not exactly perfect conditions to hold an astronomical event, the weather forcast was agenst us. The weather called for rain showers and storms all through the weekend, but we went ahead with the star party. Some of the club members arrived on Thursday while the rest arrived at Cross Ranch on Friday. Quickly we set up the areas we would use for cooking and camping and registration. Since the weather did not look very good we decided to use one of the cabins for the club and the second cabin would be used for our guests.
Our guest list this year included a very good friend, Dr. Allen Treiman from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas. Dr. Treiman studies Mars and meteorites and also assists in public education programs hosted by the institute. I had asked Allen if he would be willing to travel to North Dakota and do our star party and he agreed.
We also had on our list Brian Kerns, who along with several other volunteers across the country search hundreds of ccd images each day looking for supernovae with the Tim Puckett supernovae team. Brain also hosts our planning committee days before our main event and helps us out with publicity and planning, so we totally wanted him to come in and share with us what he does to find exploding stars.
We had invited Dr. Tim Young from UND, but due to his upcomming trip to India to watch the Venus Transit he was unable to attend. So to cover our guest speakers we had Dean Smith come in and do a workshop on planetary imaging using web cameras. Dean came to the star party with his equipment and shared with all of us how to take good planetary pictures using very inexpensive equipment. Dean has reciently recieved masters in Physics and Space Studies and currently is getting his PhD in astrophysics at UND with Dr. Young as his advisor.
We also had Chris Milford do a introductory presentation on Mars geology having an assortment of rocks and minerals which he shared with the crowd. Additionally Chris gave the dinner talk which focused on the plans of the Northern Sky Astronomical Society to use funds raised at the star party to build a public observatory in the Grand Forks area.
The Greater Grand Forks, Jaycees once again put on the steak dinner for everyone to enjoy, this provided a time for the guests to interact with our attendees as well as providing a time for everyone to get to know each other and share ideas regarding astronomy. The proceeds for this dinner all went into the observatory fund to be used for building the new observatory. Thanks to everyone who bought tickets to the steak dinner.
Even with the bad weather that prevented us from observing we still gathered under the dark skies to experence a good ole fashoned campfire chat. We sat around the fire and enjoyed each others company before heading off to sleep.
The Saturday morning was not much better as far as weather was concerned, but we still worked hard to make the best out of the situtitation. We gathered at the cabin and ate breakfast and planned a day at the local Lewis and Clark interpretive center in Washburn. Allen Treiman was interested in checking out some of local North Dakota history and we all enjoyed visting the center. When we returned Allen provided us with a workshop on meteorites, having brought several of his samples, we sat around inside the visitors cerner at Cross Ranch while looking at the cool rocks from space.
All in all the event was great, other then the bad weather we all had fun and the stress level was much lower then last year thanks to the addition of a co-chair to share the responcibilities from. We look forward to next year's star party and will continue to publish this ongoing history. Thanks to everyone to came and helped make the event successful.