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Even though there is a lot to say about the CASS and about Oahu, I can't find the time to post updates. I will do a good summary when I can but this weekend was the field trip to Big Island and many asked for updates so here is a quick summary.

We left Oahu early Saturday morning. The inter-island flight is less than an hour, we just climb up, get a scenic view of all the islands and go down in the cloudy Hilo. Big Island is really young, less than a million years old. Erosion has only dug rocky rivers and there are waterfalls everywhere. We were ahead off our schedule so we had time to do hiking in the morning. Around Hilo there is heavy rain forest, as we climb up on the Mauna Kea we cross many different eco systems, from deciduous forest to shrub lands and tundra.

While getting acclimated at the Onizuka Station we went for a hike on cinder cones. The station is above most of the clouds, the view was breath taking. The oxygen lean air gave us a good buzz, a diluted preview of what to expect at the summit. We had the honor to get dinner at Halepauhaku, the small lodge where astronomers and support staff are hosted.

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When the urge to work comes over you, just sit down and relax, it should go away.

Many asked details about my scope. As stated before, its a Maksutov Cassegrain, more precisely its a Skywatcher MAK90EQ1 with 90mm aperture and 1250mm focal length. While we are talking about star gazing its interesting to note that I won't have to make seasonal watch plans anymore because Universe Today released a 407 pages PDF of daily watch plans for 2006. French readers will also enjoy this nice local sky guide optimized for 45 degree of latitude.

I came across a really nice photo set today. This kind of miracle is only possible with the new democratization of the web. Some beekeeper decided to casually share photos of is hives. Definitely not something I would look for, I stumble on those because of the magic of tags and "interestingness" computation. Had this been put on a personal home page with animated gifs, we would all have missed the birth of a bee, the nobleness of a wild hive architecture, the coziness of a nursery and the graphic comparison of young and old bee wings. Bee wings don't regenerate. Each bee has a fixed flight expectancy. When a forager reach the point where it can barely fly, it stays at the hive and uses its wings almost exclusively for cooling the hive.

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When you live in a large enough city, watching the stars is rare delicacy that you can't often afford. This semester I took a course on astronomy and it reminded me how much I missed watching the stars. You can live in the city and completely forget that there are stars beyond that gray dome but when you learn about cosmology, about why nebulae glow, about the life cycle of stars, about dying red giants like Aldebaran, the lack of night sky becomes unbearable.

So I listened to my heart and I bought a telescope. A really nice and short 90mm maksutov-cassegrain with an equatorial mount. It is a bit heavy for the aperture but the size is a perfect fit for a motorcycle backpack. Of course as soon as I bought it there was a streak of never ending clouds. At last, after a week I was able to take it out for its first light. Now, when you have a scope one its tripod and its mount aligned and ready to watch, where do you point it? I had my planisphere in hand but all those NGC numbers don't tell much about how interesting the object is and if you can expect to see them with a 90mm scope.

Since I can't spend all my nights looking at M42, I did my homework and found the deep sky objects that can be observed with a small scope and that are well positioned at this time of the year. There is no point in keeping this information for myself so I offer this late fall watch plan to my fellow amateur astronomers who live around 45° of north latitude.

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