Jul 31

Last Night! July 30 2022

Great Meteor Shower Party at the Menke/QCAS Observatory last nite!

—— THE RAFFLE WINNER ——

From Riverdale, Iowa!
Anthony H!

—— CONGRATULATIONS!!! ——

Thank you to all that purchased tickets, and those that attended the event!!!

We did see a number of ‘Shooting Stars’… and folks were able to look thru a number of member scopes as well as 2 of the very large scopes permanently set up at the observatory.

Objects viewed included the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter with their moons… Whirlpool, Bodes, and Cigar galaxies… Ring, Dumbell, and Blue Snowball Nebulae… Alberio and Mizar Binary Star Systems… M3, M,13, M22, M53 and NGC457 Star Clusters… all pretty awesome! But to me one of the coolest things is that the Milky Way was clearly and fully visible!

A special thanx to club members, Robert, Jim, Sam, Mike, Travis, Cecil, John and Dana for helping with the event.

On Tuessday, August 2nd I will be at the Riverdale, IA Firestation from 6PM to 8PM for public solar viewing.

On Monday, August 15th our club meeting, will be held at St Ambrose University McCarthy Hall or virtually via Zoom… guests always welcome!

On Saturday, August 20, 27th and September 3rd we have public nites at the Menke/QCAS Observatory!

IN OTHER NEWS…

Seems like the 20″ Newt is doing well in it’s new roll-off home… both for visual and imaging…

Dana, Mike, John, and Jim have been working on the dome with the 12″ Newt. The door lock is fixed… electrical run… mount powered… they are still working on red lights and a polar alignment will need to be done. We will be talking about the add-on lean to room addition soon!

Concrete work for the 24X30 Roll-Off Building will hopefully be done by mid August!!! We are still looking for a builder to do the structure. We have Cecil’s 30″ Newt (Dob) and believe we’ve secured a 175mm F8 Astrophysics Triplet Refractor for in this building.

The classroom and 20″ Newt Roll-Off are currently getting a face-lift with new siding 

We will need to do another Polar Alignment of the 14″ SCT Dome…

Clear Skies!
Jeff

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