Visitors inspect the Musk Observatory

MARSpectacular began with a flash of lightning and the roar of thunder, but it didn't dampen the spirits of the 75 people who showed up for the opening night. The stars played hide and seek with the clouds, giving pause long enough for people to enjoy the wonders of the heavens and marvel at the features of Mars. Many participants used the Celestron 11 GPS and marveled at it's optics, tracking ability and ease of use.

The seeing (turbulence of the atmosphere) was fair to poor with a rather strong wind moving through the area. The only image taken was the Red Planet through the Celestron CGE1400 telescope at the Musk Mars Desert Observatory. The image is a compilation of some 200 images aligned and stacked accordingly and shows fine surface features. The last people went to bed around 3:30 am when the cloud cover finally seemed to dominate the sky.

Today, lots of people continued to tour the HAB and the MDRS facilities. Dr. Robert Zubrin had a talk about the station and Mars that was well received. We are preparing for some good weather on night number two...

Peter Detterline