Memorial Day Feast

The feast is Saturday, May 28, 2011 at 6 PM. Rocket building and GPS Scavenger Hunts begin around 1 PM.

So far:

Ed F - Chicken and Rice, paper products, rockets, glue, paint, launch pad(s)
Ray Burk - Chips (and dip?), soda, ice
Kevin Collins - homemade Polish Dill Pickles and a cooler full of sodas and ice. I will have the grill as well in case we have any charcoal issues
Jonathan Klinkowski - Burgers
Barry H - Chocolate Chip Cookies
Crystal -Tabouli salad, chopped meat for burgers, other salads like potatoe and a lemon crumb cake.

A Cloudly Day

I went up to Arunah Hill today (Sunday, May 22) to drop off my camper and did a little bit of mowing while I was there. It was cloudy and cool but the black flies were feasting on me anyway. The road was in pretty good shape, even with all the rain we have had. We received our delivery of limestone. It was left in the small clearing after the stream crossing. The grass is growing fast with all the wet weather. It was hard to tell that any mowing was done just two weeks ago. The clubhouse seemed to be free of flies and wasps when I checked on the weather station. I guess I will see everyone next weekend for our potluck gathering. Let's hope the forecast improves and we can get some observing in too.

-Barry

Hilltown Festival Music, Meteorites, and solar system to scale

Peter Sherff and I, ably assisted by our talented wives Kendra and Cathy, had a Arunah Hill booth at the Hilltown Festival at the Cummington Fairgrounds.

The two nearby stages filled the day with great music as we talked to a steady stream of hilltown folks... many who knew all about our hill.

Peter gave out meteorites to kids of all ages, in his continuing quest to give everyone in Western Massachusetts their own piece of the sky.

Peter and I also set up a scale model solar system walk, with the sun shrunken down to volleyball size. The planets were marked across the fairgrounds with flags and scale model planets. Earth was a tiny bead thirty paces away... Jupiter a fishing float over 100 years away. Uranus was at the far end of the parking lot, over 1/4 mile distant, so we had to "double back" to place Neptune.

Neither Peter or I had the drive to continue another 300 yards to place tiny Pluto.

A half dozen families took in the solar system up to Saturn, and one or two may have even made it to Uranus.

Rains held off to late afternoon, we packed up under a moderate rain and enjoyed the final music acts of the day under the stage tents.

Thanks to Kendra and Cathy!

Black Fly Work Day

A good crew turned out on a mostly pleasant but occasionally threatening skies, braving the black flies to get some work done on the hill.

Thanks to Anne and the crew from Mass Highways, we walked the gravel road and explored ideas for improving drainage. Anne made several good suggestions that we'll try to implement over the next few months. Thanks to Kevin Collins for leading this effort.

Jonathan Klinkowski and Tom Walker spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out our existing culverts best they could given the tools at hand. They report our culverts were pretty well filled in with debris from over the years, and they were able to improve flow considerably though more work is needed.

Barry Hervieux and Tom wrangled mowers around the pavilion, Club House, Gaertner, and upper picnic area.a The grass has really exploded in just a few weeks, and mowing is a necessary job, though thankless hard work with our ancient mowers.

Ray Burk, Peter Scherff and I cleared a beech and birch tree from the clearing.

Dan Carnevale had to postpone the planned Notchview observing due to clouds. Our next event will be the Hilltown Festival at the Cummington Fairgrounds on Saturday, May 14. Should be a fun event. I'm already on the lookout for planets for our "Scale Model Solar System Walk".

-Ed

Bald Eagles, Bolides, and Transparent Skies

April exited in grand style on Arunah Hill. Barry Hervieux was the first on the hill, an was treated to an extraordinary site: A very large adult bald eagle lording over Arunah Hill.



By sunset, about a dozen of us were on the hill for the 5A's star party that Kevin Collins organized. The weather was perfect for star gazing: transparent dry skies, no wind, and temperatures slowly dropping from the fifties into the mid thirties.

Several large dobsonians went into action early, catching Saturn in the late twilight. As the sky darkened, M-3 filled up some wide-field eyepieces, a terrific globular cluster that resolves to the core. M-3 caused a bit of discussion of our high school Latin (2 weeks worth for me) as we tried different pronunciations of Canes Venatici. Once the sky fully darkened, galaxies dominated, usually in multiples. The "Leo Trio", the Whirlpool with the companion bridge revealed, M-84 & M-86 surrounded by tiny faint smudges caused lots of scurrying between scopes.

The Sombrero stood up to high magnification and had us all braving the heights of Kevin's ladder. Thanks Jonathan for "spotting". The rules were if you feel off the ladder you had to fall into the rocks, not Kevin's telescope.

The beautiful skies also revealed a dazzling bolide, exploding as it headed downward in the southeastern sky, racing out of Bootes. Someone refered to the -8 spectacle as a "Arcturide". A space station pass gave us all a chance to wave at "local" astronaut Cadie Coleman.

Before I left the hill, a view of the Beehive Cluster in Barry's little 5" rich field scope showed you don't always need big glass to see some wonderful site on a clear dark night on Arunah Hill.

And by the way... if you bet there would still be snow on Arunah Hill in May this year... you won! There isn't much left, it it may be gone by this afternoon, but there is a tiny patch of snow hanging on in a shady spot on our lower parking.

NOTE: Pictures to follow, once I get them emailed from Kevin and Barry.

-Ed