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goto guys).  The audience really got into the discussion, running the meeting into overtime.  Noted FWAS philosopher and sage Bob Newman summed it up with a metaphor: "It's like taking a vacation to Seattle--some people drive to see the country along the way, and others fly to get there and spend more time in the city." 

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asteroid was scheduled for 10pm. I had a FOV of slightly over 1 degree so I could easily cover both tracks on the S&T chart. . In the concession to star hopping I used my goto function to get to M57 then did a few hops south and west to find the 1000pm target star. I could not automatically find and track the asteroid using my scope computer alone.

Right on time the asteroid appeared and we tracked it westward thru Lyra and into Hercules for about 20 minutes. It was dimmer than any of the stars on the S&T mag 9 chart but substantially brighter that the limiting magnitude of my 8" on the bright gibbous moon night. Harry and I called it a magnitude 10. . The asteroid was moving against the background at 8 arc minutes per minute so I would have to make tracking adjustments at least that often to keep it in view.

Doug Christianson

Five members of FWAS turned out on Saturday evening at the Optimist Club ball fields north of Fort Worth under that able leadership of Becky Nordeen. Bob Newman with Harry's green laser pointer, Barry Lieb with his gorgeous tripod and binocular mount for his 11x70's, Danny Arthur with his dob hunting down Uranus, Sandra Milfeld with her new dob, and Doug Christianson with his goto SCT. Several hundred young ballplayers attended a kickoff event at the ball fields and our star party was squeezed in after the hot dogs and the big screen movie and before bed check for all the campers.

Probably a hundred kids and parents came to look through our scopes at Uranus, M13, Albierio, the Moon, and various other relatively bright objects prior to the clouds coming in and bed check. The star hoppers not only outnumbered the goto'ers Saturday, but proved one of their points as well. My Meade LX200 really objected to the lack of power from a 12v battery instead of its 18v power supply. I managed to complete a polar alignment before it quit, but after that I couldn't goto anything. I was almost in the dob mode, except that I was still tracking. So wouldn't you know, Becky's big dob advantage is true, any scope (hers was borrowed), anyplace (the optimist ballpark), and anytime (between the movie and lights out) actually rings true. However, there will be another day and a longer extension cord and the mighty goto will win at the star parties.

BTW, if you haven't seen Sandra's new 10 inch DOB, you haven't seen anything. She said it was her "art piece" and that it had to be pretty enough to be stored in her living room. In the true sense of the sidewalk astronomers, her scope uses almost nothing from the store except the mirrors. So until she succumbs to the fever and adds a regulation focuser, Sandra won't be borrowing any eyepieces or filter cause they don't fit. Sandra reports that her scope has so many coats of special paint that she changed the balance several times in the process.