Vogelsberg Star Party (ITV)

May 9 to May 12, 2013

Mostly cloudy, sometimes raining, despite some forecasts predicting a few clear hours. But it was a complex, changing weather situation which
was hard to predict. Altogether I saw four objects in three nights with my 16-inch: Jupiter (first night) and Epsilon Lyrae, M13 and M71 in two
cloud holes in the third night .But people were generally relaxed and good-spirited, ITV visitors are used to frequently poor conditions. So social
contacts and small-talk dominated the event. About 450 visitors, a low number for the ITV, surely due to poor weather conditions.

Lake Gedern, our site is opposite behind the trees

Timm Klose with his lightweight-16" (13 kg) and 20" Dobsons (25 kg)

Christian with his 8" Schiefspiegler

With Raffael Benner at his 30-inch

Martin Brueckner sets up 18"

Astroshop dealers: Michael, Bernd and Hans

Dealer Tassilo (center)

Award ceremony for self-built telescopes: Judge Wolf Hartmann ...

... and the audience

From left Ben, Juergen Breitung and his son
and (crouching) Friedhelm Huebner's "astro-crackerbarrel":

From left Friedhelm, Ronald, Ingo and Thomas
with self-built 8-inch from Ingo

Last night

On the satellite images we saw a big cloud gap, which would perhaps have given us
three hours of clear after-rain sky - if we would have been 50 kilometers to the North.

But so the southern edge of the cloud gap just touched us a bit, and later ...

... only some "luring gaps" were left


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