COSMOS 2012 :: April 13th to 15th in Tullamore!

Excellent weekend, great talks, great craic!

Here's some snaps....

irishastro.org.uk/galleries/cosmos2012/

Thanks to all at Midlands astronomy club for organising great weekend once again. The talks were interesting and informative and along with good weather and informal friendly atmosphere I'm sure everyone went home happy.

Hope to do it all again next year.

John.

My first ( wont be the last ) Cosmos.

Thanks a million to all for the friendly welcome, advice and know how!

Valerie and I enjoyed ourselves at Cosmos this year. Thank you to all the organizers. Praise God for the 3 observing sessions we had. I have to ask Dave Lillis what magnification did you use when I observed M13 through your 20" Dobsonian? It was spectacular!
I had to pinch myself when world-renowned astrophotographer Thierry Legault viewed through my 6.2" apo at triple star Theta Aurigae and he said the view was very nice.
My own thrilling first time sight was finding Struve 1245 in southern Cancer. It is a quintuple star at 112X shaped like a cross. If anyone needs to know how to find it, ask on this forum.

Aubrey.

Hi Aubrey,
It was great to finally meet you in person, meeting people with great enthusiasm for observing is fab.
While you were there, we were using the 9mm on M13 which showed it at 278x
Now, by the end of the night, it had got higher and the seeing was a little better and the mirrors were cooler, we were able to use the 5mm and see it at 500x, this made it bigger then the fov, so the core was fully resolved,
One of the guys (I cant remember his name lent me a 6-3 teleview zoom lens and the image was still good at 4mm, giving us a crazy 625x, at 3mm (833x) the stars started to become blobs and loose their pointedness.
We tried it on M3 and M92, both of the cores of these looked better at 4mm, M92's core became fully resolved.
I cant believe we were able to use these powers on these objects, thats a first for me I can tell you.
On the other side of the coin, Mars was blah... and Saturn been very low wasnt a whole lot better but did improve as the night went on, towards the end of the night the cassini division was easily seen. .
Im glad we got a super view of M51, spiral arms,. the works.
Best nights observing at cosmos for me since I started going to it, over 10 years ago.


btw, maybe next year we should start putting down our board names on the name badges as I'm sure there are people here I walked right past not knowing their real names

Wow, Dave, 278X on M13! My 4mm TMB gives me 280X on my 6.2" apo. I have a 3.5mm Nagler which gives 320X, and lastly a 3mm Radian which gives me 374X. I must try the 3.5mm on it on a clear night.
I also agree with your thought that could use our board names on our badges. I never met dmcdona, and yet he does regularly reply to me on this website. I still do not know the guy.
Oh, and I feel vindicated that you could not see much on Mars. Apart from the North Polar Cap, I could see nothing either.

Aubrey.