I went to the Alberta Star Party one evening last week to check the location and test the concept of the "Time till Sunset Dial". This trip involved a slight deviation, 100 km north of my usual commuting route home. The declination of the wall was found to be a little off due west (S 86 W). The shadow of a plumb bob string across a horizontal pad of paper held against the wall gave me azimuth readings at specific times. These were later reduced to determine the declination of the wall to within half a degree. I left the paper prototype of the sunset dial taped to the wall. The gnomon is a finishing nail of the appropriate length. This prototype demonstrated the concept well and passed the "Cool Test". I am now set to design and build a more permanent dial designed for the specific location. Thanks again, Mac, for the design manual.
The clear dark skies and transparency at the Caroline site were excellent that night. The twilight howling of packs of coyotes was interrupted by a brilliant Iridium flash at -8 Magnitude. We defined the end of twilight the time when the Andromeda Galaxy (M 31) could be easily seen with the naked eye. Look for the Champagne flute asterism between the chevron of Cassiopeia and the brightest star of the great square of Pegasus.The galaxy is seen as the fizz just above the faint stars forming the top of the glass. The most impressive telescopes were a number of large home built Dobsonians with apertures from ranging from 12 to 16 inches. I the hands of the skilled observers of the RASC, these scopes really brought in the faint fuzzy objects of the deep sky. Many of these Dobsonian scopes were mounted on Poncet platforms that tracked to keep the objects in view. As this was a working week day, I left before the Star Party really got going. I had made the mistake of looking at Jupiter through one of these big Dobs. The brilliant image destroyed my night vision. Cheers, Roger Bailey N 51 W 115
