Four days of fantastic weather at ITT and Glockner

Thursday, September 29, till Monday, October 3, 2011. I took along my 16". My intention was to stay three nights at the ITT,
and to return home along the Glockner High Alpine Road, with an additional observing night on the Edelweiss-Spitze along
the way.

ITT star party at the Emberger Alm (alt. 1770 m)

The ITT had about 250 participants, it was sunny all day long and clear during the nights.

Werner, Patrick and Gabi (Image: Stefan)

Ben and Patrick at my 16-inch (Image: Stefan)

While the first night Th/Fr was still quite wet, the following two nights were really fine, my estimates were fst = 7.1 and 7.0 respectively.
I had to do some "Guided-tours" with the 16'' - usually bright globulars like M13 receive most "Ah's" and "Oh's", also the Veil nebula with OIII ( but it looks
quite strange and alien to some people, leaving them a bit puzzled). Not to forget NGC 891 high up in Alpine conditions, or M31 and h+Chi. Number one is
of course M42, but when it was high up most casual visitors were already asleep. I showed some fainter objects as well, namely the galaxy clusters around
NGC 383, NGC 507, NGC 708, NGC 906 or NGC 1275. And the strange NGC 523 (with it's three brightenings well seen with 16'') or the curious
planetary Jones 1 (extremely OIII-dependent).

A lower part of the star party

Gabi and Ben

Our traditional site is the "Western Meadows"

Christoph Ries

Departure, on the left Haley's 10-inch "Christina"

Christoph Ries

At Glockner-site, on the Edelweiss-Spitze (alt. 2570 m)

As intended, I left the ITT on Sunday, to move to a site close to the central Alpine ridge for one night.

The Grossglockner (alt. 3798 m), as seen from the High Alpine Road

Site Edelweiss-Spitze (center) from the South

The Edelweiss-Spitze is a highly esteemed site among amateurs - so no wonder I met about 10 other observers there, among them Uwe Glahn.
And Moni and Rainer, who are fellow Munich club members.

Uwe at his 27-inch

From left Moni, Ben and Rainer

Moni observing

Rainer and Ben

In Uwe's 27" I saw NGC 7354 with about 800x as a nice ring nebula, and the interesting NGC 520 - seeing all the
peculiar details he had already documented in one of his excellent Astro-drawings. The limiting magnitude was about fst = 7.2 .

Shortly before a superb sunrise

The cabin Edelweisshuette in the morning sun.

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