In October, first weekend after Moon nov, on the hill Čeřínek, near from Jihlava town was proceeded special astronomical meeting - MHV (Czech equivalent for Marginal Star Magnitude) with strap “Meeting with Astrotechnics under the Sky”. There is short report from that meeting.
So, we met on the hill, astronomer professionals, amateurs, experienced observers or beginners for experiences exchange. Our aim was observation, observation and observation. But weather was for astronomers horrible. There was same situation as known from well-known French commix, where Asterix asks Anticlimax: “Do you often get fog like that?” And Anticlimax, who guided heroes to the England, answers: “Goodness, No, old chap! Only when it isn’t raining” The weather was such significant. Colleges in my work were asking to me: “Look, today is very very cloudy. Somewhere must be astronomers meeting, do they?” In fact, the weather was not ideal for observing. We could observe neither one another nor the stars.
But we (observers) had a good mood. There was simple reason for it. May be you know such situation, you are assembling and correcting your telescope in the centre of a field more then one hour and after that suddenly the sky went cloudy. It is nice to be sure, that assembling telescope is useless. So, we spent night by lecture on big radio telescope in Arecibo.
Whole night from Friday to Saturday it has been cloudy. Saturday morning it started to rain. The MHV was equal to minus infinity magnitude up that time, because can not be seen our nearest star, the Sun. Hence we started observe our tubes and we discussed various optical defects.
We fulfilled evening again with lecture on expedition our colleges. They had been in Poland following steps of Copernicus. And last, we watched video “How to our universe had been beginning and how we can measure distances there”.
In the night our situation went worse. Despite of huge amount of water everywhere, the water pipes in our hostel stopped carrying water.
Early morning was better. About four o’clock in the morning the sky was clean and we could watch stars.
Now, the problem was only water from the ground. Water precipitated on every part of telescope and later morning frost covered our tubes.
My best experience from observing was not looking by telescope, but it was transit of ISS at six o’clock morning. There were only Saturn, Venus and Jupiter on the morning sky and ISS transited only 30’ below the Venus.
In the „Morning“ we were disputing together about light pollution and after that we went home ready to meet under the sky despite the weather again.
Pictures: Josef Szylar