The Ninth Autumn Equinox Star Party 2003

This year was to be the final Autumn Equinox gathering held at The Dower House Touring Park, Thetford.

The Party had outgrown the site. The new venue to continue the tradition will be Kelling Heath 2004.

I arrived in the early afternoon of the 23rd September after an uneventful drive from London. The traffic was easy with no holdups at all.

Now setup normally takes 15 minutes for the tent, 30 minutes to unpack, 15 minutes to assemble the telescope and 5 minutes to glug a glass of something. However....there were many friends already on site, all wanted to socialise (as it was another year on?!?!?!?) so the tent erection took time, then the unpacking was behind schedule, and it was near twilight when the scope was finished. And instead of one dram....there were a few more. But the work was done. A meal to follow, more chatting, then a very clear night ahead of me. The skies were great.

I had my new Mitty SuperWedge modification to play with, that proved to be perfection during the polar aligning stage. Observed through to 01.30 then tiredness took over. It had been a long day.

During daylight, the next three days were spent ironing out problems I was experiencing with my Daystar and Solarmax 90 Ha filters. Kevin Smith of Daystar UK offered every support including Richard, his friend, who provided me with a new Triac control chip, and Alan Sky of BC&F who provided a first class effort to resolve my Solarmax issues.

The evenings were spent refining my polar alignment, then getting it all wrong and starting again. (One must remember to take off a Lumicon GEG before doing a goto alignment where the tube rotates into the fork arms!!!). Beautiful views of a number of Messier objects; Mars and Saturn were good targets. Then sitting back and just watching the sky with no optical aids, wondrous. A few very bright meteors were also observed. The motion of the spacestation and a few Iridium flares added interest to the event. On the other hand, the efforts with my SXV camera however were a disaster, no comment.

The main event was the Saturday, didn't win anything on the raffle, but some terrific prizes were on offer. The owners of The Dower House were presented with a plaque and a glass vase for assisting in making the Autumn Skycamp such a success over the last 9 years. Mike Cook made the presentation on behalf of Loughton Astronomy Club. There followed a barbecue, complete with rain that only got worse as the evening wore on.

There were a wide veriety of telescopes at the event. Small to large apertures. Dobsonians, Refractors, Casegrains, Bino viewers and portable observatories. One scope, orange in colour, took 2 men to put it together, weighed in at over 60Kg. You had to see the bearing shafts and the huge gear/worm/stepper motor assemblies to appreciate the build level. A surprise was two SB Paramount's. One was surmounted with three scopes attached, consisting of a 14" Celestron and a brace of Takahashi's. The other was a showpiece for one of the trade stands.

To continue.