A night at the ITV (Vogelsberg) star party 2015


Friday, May 15, 2015:

This time the forecast was better for central Germany than for the Alps, so I decided in favor of the ITV, and went on Friday. I "only"
took along my old 10-inch Coulter Dobson, since I intended to stroll around on the site anyway, and to take part in the buffet provided
by various old friends with their big Dobsons. I met as planned with my old Munich observing friend Friedhelm Huebner, who lives on
the banks of the Rhine for 12 years now - near to where he initially comes from. The weather was fine for one night as projected; all in
all about 450 observers took part.

At Lake Gedern, our site is behind the trees at center


Friedhelm and Ben, with the old 10-inch Coulter

Friedhelm and Joerg Peters (with his 25-inch)

F.l. Tassilo, Ben and Walter (former ITV organizer)

The central "Main Street" of the star party

It became gradually dark ...

,... but rather slow due to the northern declination of a bit more than 50 degrees. In mid May it only gets "really dark" there
maybe for some short three hours. But the rainfall of the last days had beneficially cleared the sky: After a cloudless afternoon
the whole night stayed clear, and it became one of the best nights I had so far seen at this site. Despite the relative vicinity to the
Frankfurt metropolitan area the Milky Way was quite conspicuous. Timm Klose and another observer reported comparatively really
good SQM values of about 21,3 after midnight.

22:39 CEST: Juergen & Ulrike Breitung and Friedhelm at the 22-inch Obsession

At Juergen's 22-inch many classical highlights were served, also often specially prepared for strolling guests. M51, NGC 4631,
NGC 4565, M64 and M82 showed many details, and Friedhelm picked up the NGC 3729 / NGC 3718 group ; the latter showed
the central dark band, and we also saw some mottling and details in the nearby galaxy group Hickson 56 .

Friedhelm at the eyepiece, at right Juergen

1:43 CEST: Ben at his old 10-inch

In between I went for a one and a half hours stroll through the site. As usual the queues were longest
at Raffael Benner's big Dobson:

0:08 CEST: Raffael at his 30-inch, serving the globular M56

Martin Brueckner (left) at his 18-inch

Joerg observes at his 25-inch

Timm and Dietmar, at Timm's lightweight 21-inch

Joerg showed a detailed "Whale" NGC 4631. And at Timm's Dobson we made a hike through Canes Venatici, crossing M94,
NGC 4485/90, NGC 4449 and M106 with NGC 4217, to M109 in Ursa Major. And the Veil nebula was gorgeous again with OIII !

1:18 CEST in the "dealer's corner": Both Tassilo ...

... and the "Intercon Spacetec" folks were offering observing opportunities.

The last two hours up to 3:30 AM I was back again in our corner, also using my old 10-inch. Friedhelm remembered the "good old times", and
praised as usual the quality of the optics; I showed him the dense open cluster NGC 6819 in Cygnus. And at Juergen's 22-inch it was OIII-time again:
The Veil, Crescent and North America nebulae were all great ! A really nice, relaxed observing night, both concerning the sky and the nice encounters :)

2:24 CEST: Juergen at his telescope


Saturday, May 16, 2015

It was already cloudy in the morning, with some raindrops in between. At noon Uli Zehndbauer had his debut as the judge in the traditional
award ceremony for self-built telescopes.

Judge Uli does a god job ...

... with an interested audience around

As usual among the dealers Martin Birkmaier ...

... and Joe (left) and Irmgard (right) took part

Farewell to old friends: f.l. Ulrike, Juergen, Friedhelm and Ben


The forecast was not good for the next days, and I was not really fit. So I decided to return the 280 miles to Munich on Saturday
afternoon, after only one night. But it was nevertheless a full success and worth the travel: A clear night with a really good sky
given the site in a quite populated area in central Germany, and a nice social event as well - and summing up: great :)

Back