After 11 years of our establishment, we are celebrating the SILVER JUBILEE for our campings !! Where we held the the 25th astronomical camping in Al-Azraq desert at the night of 13-14 May 1999.

L to R (clockwise): Abu-Waleed, Sawalmeh, Hemsy, Odeh, Odwan, Konsul, Tell, Ahmad, Dalee, Murad, Naimat, Adhami, Wafa', Hafa', Bani-Hamad, Bani-Hamad.

Unlike our most campings which were held on the occasion of a specific astronomical event, such as meteor showers or comets, the purpose of this camping was for general observation. Nevertheless, a recent discovered comet was in the sky, which is comet Lee, as well as the very thin waning crescent ! JAS is very interested in observing the crescents, but that was the first time for us to observe a waning crescent. In addition, before starting our camping we declared our slogan: " Comet, Crescent, and 50 objects !! " Yeah, the biggest observed objects was about 43 astronomical objects in one camping. So we wanted to break that record !

Our camp is about 150 Km east of Amman, where the limiting magnitude reaches +6.5 sometimes. Thus, it is very suitable place for deep sky objects observation. We had a 5-inch telescope as well as several binoculars.

As the night fell we started looking for the comet, and we did succeed ! It was relatively an easy target, shining at magnitude about +7.3, it was easily visible by both binoculars and the telescope. Lee looked like fuzzy white ball, while in the photo shown below it appears like a green-blue fuzzy object. We were so happy, since we didn't see many comets previously, also because the first part of our slogan was achieved :-).

After that we started observing the deep sky objects, and I must say that it was like the marathon ! Because of two reasons; firstly the finder was broken, so we had to work without it, which is a very hard job !! Secondly, we don't have much time to observe 50 objects, we were about 16 observers, so it takes time for all the observers to see the object through the telescope. During about 8 hours we observed the below objects:-

Planets:-

1. Venus (During daytime).
2. Mars (Very remarkable dark features, and hard white cap)
3. Jupiter (With four moons).
4. Uranus (Beautiful blue-green disk !).
5. Sun (Many sunspots)

1. M 44 (CNC, Beehive, naked eyes)
2. M 4 (Sco)
3. M 6 (Sco, naked eyes)
4. M 7 (Sco, naked eyes)
5. M 18 (Sgr)
6. M 21 (Sgr)
7. M 23 (Sgr)
8. M 24 (Sgr, Star cloud, naked eyes)
9. NGC 6530 (Sgr, in the Lagoon Nebula, naked eyes)
10. NGC 884 + NGC 869 (Cas, Double cluster, naked eyes)

Globular Clusters:-

1. M 13 (Her, Hercules Cluster, naked eyes)
2. M 22 (Sgr, naked eyes !)
3. M 54 (Sgr)
4. M 69 (Sgr)
5. M 70 (Sgr)
6. M 10 (Oph)
7. M 12 (Oph)
8. M 62 (Oph)
9. M 107 (Oph)
10. M 30 (Cap)
11. M 71 (Sge)
12. M 80 (Sco)
13. Omega Centauri (Cen, naked eyes !)

Nebulas:-

1. M 8 (Sgr, Lagoon Nebula)
2. M 16 (Sgr, Eagle Nebula)
3. M 17 (Sgr, Swan or Omega Nebula)
4. M 20 (Sgr, Trifid Nebula)
5. M 27 (Vul, Dumbbell Nebula)
6. M 57 (Lyr, Ring Nebula)
7. NGC 7000 (North America Nebula, naked eyes)

Galaxies:-

1. M 31 (And, Andromeda Galaxy, naked eyes)
2. M 81 (UMa)
3. M 82 (UMa)
4. M 101 (UMa, Pinwheel)
5. M 108 (UMa)
6. M 109 (UMa)
7. M 65 (Leo)
8. M 66 (Leo)
9. M 95 (Leo)
10. M 96 (Leo)
11. M 105 (Leo)
12. NGC 3384 (Leo)
13. NGC 3628 (Leo)
14. M 104 (Vir, Sombrero)

We kept observing until we saw the zodiacal light, and then the light started to hide the stars, so we took a quick break, and then we were ready to spot the very thing waning crescent of Muharram 1420 AH on 14 May at the East before sunrise. The TOPOCENTRIC -NOT GEOCENTRIC- Moon's age was 'minus' 35 hours and 16 minutes. The Moonrise occurred at 03:55, at which we started the observation, and with much happiness I shouted at 04:10 saying .... Here it is !! It was firstly visible by binocular 7X50. We pointed the telescope at the crescent, and so all the observers saw it. After few minutes Mr. Hani Al-Dalee' surprised us by saying:... I can see it by naked eyes !!

Actually it was not that surprise to see such 'relatively' big crescent, but what we managed to know is how long time we will be able to see the crescent ? Will we be able to see it after the sunrise ??

The apparent sunrise occurred at 04:38, which is the same time at which the last observer was able to see the crescent by naked eyes ! But it was still visible by telescope, and we kept tracking it by motor drive for 45 minutes after the sunrise ! Then it was about to leave the field of the telescope ! We had two choices; either to leave it to leave the field, or to try to get it back to the center, but that was a VERY hard job, because it was very very barely visible, and any error could get it lost ! Unfortunately, this what happened ! I believe we were able to track it more, but I guess what we achieved is fine ! Kindly see the below photo for the observed crescent. Notice that the photo is 180 degrees rotated because of the reflector telescope was used.

The observers were:- Hani Al-Dalee' (ICOP), Khalid Tell (ICOP), Moh'd Odeh (ICOP), Mohammad Murad (ICOP), Ibrahim Odwan, Waleed Ahmad, Amera Al-Hemsy, Ali Sawalmeh, Khalil Konsul (President of JAS), Ahmad Naimat, Yahya Bani Hamad, Ghazaleh Al-Abd

As we finished the observation, we started counting the objects which we observed, as recorded by tape recorder during the observation. Initially we had the felling that we did not observe 50 objects, but the real surprise was that the number of the last object we observed was 50 excluding the comet and crescent !!! What a coincidence !! We were so glad to know that we successfully achieved the camping's slogan ! And by this observations, we definitely can say that it was one of the best observing campings !