Open Invitation to EAE Summer Star Parties-Mt Parnon, GREECE

Good Morning Ireland!

Sad a moment it was when we had to say good bye and fairwell to our 4 new friends Michael, Frank, Dave L & Dave G.

We all had a great time and enjoyed the nature, the sky and talking under the stars - and under the hot Sun, too!

All amateur astronomers share the same passion for (g)astronomy and life and we were all made of the same stardust (I don't know about
astrologers).
For us, meeting you it was a real pleasure, and I hope to meet again. In Novosibirsk for sure!

John, we expect to meet population II (Ben et all) sometime!

Photos coming soon.
........
ps. Left things:
6) A very nice green ball, in the shape of an elliptical galaxy, with a shamrock stamp! Found in Leonidas's car.
I don't think you could ever manage to get it back!

*soft Voice* Good Morning

What can I say!!!
The generosity of our Greek friends was simply staggering!, very well organised, food, drink, transport, great company, all you could ask for !!!
I was stunned to see that almost everyone had fluent english, I couldn't even say hi in Greek :oops:
We were collected from the airport on Wednesday and brought to the hotel, then we were brought to an observatory on a hill in Athens where we had an amazing view of the city and of the Acropolis !!
You see it on TV but to see it for real is something else :shock:

On Thursday morning we were brought up to Parnon, a fantastic scenic 3 hour drive, the site itself is a perfect high altitude location with a natural spring nearby, without which it would have been impossible to stay up there.

The views of the sky there are amazing, the Sagittarius and Scorpius milkyway view alone is worth the trip, it makes the milkyway in Cygnus look quite feeble, we really loose out by not seeing it properly from Ireland (wait until you see some of the pictures the lads got of it!!!)
The star clouds were easy to see and were amazing in binoculars. The lagoon and trifid nebulae were fab and M22 was much better then M13, best I've ever seen it. The guys there were extremely generous with their telescopes and we all got fantastic high power views of many objects in the sky. We had 3 clear nights, the first day it was cloudy with lightening but it then cleared as it got dark. On Friday night we noticed flashes in the north eastern sky which was completely clear, we found out that there were clouds below us (we were at an altitude of ~1400 meters) and that a massive thunder storm was underway, it went on for a few hours and was flashing every 10-20 seconds, simply amazing. We also saw the ISS pass over and countless meteors, more then I've see in the past 3 years here. One striking thing I noticed was the night-time horizon, atmospheric extinction is no where near as bad as it is here.
On Saturday night we all noticed what looked like dark thin clouds on the southern horizon only to be told it was a forest fire 40km away, the smoke drifted further away and the sky cleared, an event which was a complete novility for us.
The range of scopes there was fab, 20, 18, 15 inch dobs and numerous other SCTs, dobs and refractors.
I certainly packed way too much clothes, next time I'll bring alot less and bring a much bigger tent. Daytime site temperatures were in the high 20s and night-time to me seemed like the low teens, daytime Athens temperatures were in the high 30s !. We went for a swim on the way back on Sunday, I'm now a member of the same club as John Murphy as I ended up stumbling on something with tiny spikes and am near done with getting them out of my feet :lol: I didn't feel them at all and only noticed them when I saw them.
The beach was fantastic and Greece is now right up there with Spain in my list of holiday destinations.
Many thanks to Leonidas, Christina, Vagelis, Yiannis, Stella, Kiriyaki, Stefanos, George + family, Dora, Stelios, Adonis (sorry for bad spellings :oops: ) and everyone else who's names currently eludes me, you all made us feel very welcome and thanks for bearing my sad attempts at trying to pronounce Greek worlds, I have a memory like a sieve at times.

You guys should all be getting paid by the Greek tourism board, you did a fantastic job. !
I only wish we could repay you by having you at an observing session here in Ireland and showing you the sites, but given the totally unpredictable bad weather here it would be a star free trip. See you all again in Novosibirsk.
MANY MANY THANKS!!!

See you all again in Novosibirsk.

Dave et al,

Please accept my sincere apologies for not being there! I stayed home so as to do some imaging but the haze which has appeared out of nowhere the past five to six days made a mess of my plans and added to my regret at not being with you atop Mt Parnon.

I am delighted to learn that you had a great time ... not too much of a surprise knowing that Mt Parnon is like paradise to us.

With the exception of Dave Grennan who cannot make it to Novo, I will see the three of you in a few weeks and hopefully we can make up for the lost time and opportunity from this past weekend.

I think that in a few years I will have more Irish friends than Greek friends.We was all very lucky with the weather.And we was all very sad yesterday at the airport.I founded that small Irish football in my car,if you need it just came over my place in Athens to get it.
Thank you for visiting us,see you in Novosibirsk
ena-dio-tria!

A very BIG thank you to all our Greek friends for looking after us so well! It was a wonderful experience! Not only did we have 3 beautiful clear nights but we also made some amazing friends. We were really well looked after and your generosity was incredible. The whole weekend was so well organised and we really appreciate the efforts you all made to make us feel welcome and to make your stay comfortable. If any of you ever want to visit Ireland, please contact us and we will do our best to make your time in Ireland an enjoyable one.

THANK YOU!