CMAS has been invited to assist at MARS, The Maine Astronomy Retreat, to be held in late July, 2017, at Medomak Camp. This is a week-long event hosted by an editor of “Sky and Telescope Magazine,” held in the comfortable accommodations of a classic Maine summer camp. It caters to people who need to travel many hundreds of miles to reach the dark skies we enjoy in our everyday lives, those Colin calls, “our photon-starved friends from the South.” Those from light-polluted skies often can not see much at the eyepiece, and so must instead tease images from computer-enhanced astrophotography. Ideal deep-sky, visual telescopes are thus often lacking in their stables, nor have they necessarily formed connections to local astronomers in the dark sky areas they visit, who are experienced with visual astronomy. CMAS has been invited to assist at MARS, The Maine Astronomy Retreat, to be held in late July, 2017, at Medomak Camp. This is a week-long event hosted by an editor of “Sky and Telescope Magazine,” held in the comfortable accommodations of a classic Maine summer camp. It caters to people who need to travel many hundreds of miles to reach the dark skies we enjoy in our everyday lives, those Colin calls, “our photon-starved friends from the South.” Those from light-polluted skies often can not see much at the eyepiece, and so must instead tease images from computer-enhanced astrophotography. Ideal deep-sky, visual telescopes are thus often lacking in their stables, nor have they necessarily formed connections to local astronomers in the dark sky areas they visit, who are experienced with visual astronomy.
Enter CMAS, with Colin’s 16″ mirror and our many years of observing at the eyepiece. Just as he did last year for The Maine State Star Party and Acadia Night Sky Festival, Colin will remove the mirror from the scope in Brower’s dome, and set it into its portable Dob mount. CMAS is hereby recruiting members to work the big Dob and any other telescopes we choose to bring, and to befriend our astronomical brethren for a night of CMASian visual astronomy. There truly is something magical and exceptional to CMAS’s routine astronomy under Maine’s dark skies, and now we’re invited to share it. CMAS membership and a love of the skies are the only prerequisites; expertise in guiding telescopes is not required. Our beginners can join theirs. Medomak Camp is only twenty minutes from Brower, so this is an easy destination for many of us.
This star party will be called as a flash mob. Watch your email for a message to appear in the afternoon of whatever night the skies are first expected to be clear at Medomak Camp. There may be additional nights, depending upon the weather and the Retreat’s other programming. This event is open to formal members of CMAS; please understand that we can not extend Medomak Camp’s invitation to us onward to the general public, or to prospective CMAS members.
Medomak Camp and Retreat Center
178 Liberty Rd, Washington, ME 04574
By Flash Mob, sometime between July 23 and July 29, 2017 http://www.medomakretreatcenter.com/starparty.php
