Fish Lake Oct 09

Weather in Michigan is tough enough to predict so one takes a "you get what you get" attitude. We would get both clouds and clear both nights but it was the thin, high, cold Friday night cloud cover that played tricks on us, yielding a very rare display of verticle ice crystal pillars of light high in the sky. What a show! They could be seen all across the region as reports suggested. There were columns in many directions especially to our north where bright light sources from the ground are much fewer. Said sources remain a mystery, but it sure was an unusual sight. No precipitation made it to the ground during the display. Meanwhile, students from EMU and Delta college got to look through our fleet of scopes including the new C14 / CGE mount (it proved troublesome on its maiden tour but we're confident the bugs will be resolved), Bob Justin's and Jack Underwood's workhorse C11's, Jay Sinclair's and Eric Kennedy's SCT's, Keven Dehne's 13-inch wood masterpiece Dob, Norb's C11 now on a CI700 mount, Jason Gibson's visual Dob and CCD rig, and several others in between. John Kirchhoff of Rider's Hobby in Ypsilanti would join us Saturday evening with his lovely 18-inch Dobsonian for truely nice deep sky views- remote autumn galaxies and bright nebulae. Jason, Jon Mills, and Nick Arnold would concentrate on astrophotography, while Kevin gave a great tour of the night sky to a sizable gathering as skies cleared out beautifully for the bulk of Saturday night. There were several early Orionid meteors spotted, remnants from Comet Halley, during Kevin's talk and throughout the night. Many of those brave souls survived his earlier "Walk of Death" to the wood chip pile. Yes, such drama... (nobody ever gets lost but ya have to watch out for those nasty soakers along the trail!) Rockets launched on this trek included a first-timer flight by Erik Dehne that caught a nearby tree -usual fare for Fish Lake- and a powerhouse G-motor flight aboard a Norb Vance special... one where the shute failed to fully deploy. Yes, he's used to a reputation for pesky parachutes but this time it worked to our advantage. The rocket was recovered north of the launch site and redeployed for a rare G-motor night launch from down the the hill at the volleyball court. Wow, a loud green streak into the dark star-filled sky was pretty exciting, especially the landing... such fun! Plenty of food, especially the big turkey dinner, Jay's precarious unicycle trials, Chris' juggling, Jack's daytime star observing, a fair amount of sun, and pre-peak autumn colors rounded out yet another successful Fish Lake weekend. Autumn is so nice even if it was a tad cooler than usual. All right... it was cold! The frost was thick on Sunday morning. But that's the norm for our favorite time of year at the ol' KEEC.

Photos from Norbert Vance with astronomy and rocket images from Jason Gibson and Jon Mills
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