Beehive Binocular Byzantine Battle
The Beehive Binocular Byzantine Battle (aka BBBB or B4) is a fun challenge contest for members of the Cape Cod Astronomical Society. This is run solely by me and not endorsed by anybody remotely official. I’m just a member of the club and want to give something back.
The goal of the contest is to induce people to get out of their easy chairs and outside observing. My binocular talk last month was well received, so I’d thought I’d make a binocular challenge.
So let’s get started with the name:
Beehive – M44 is also known as the Beehive Cluster. It is a great binocular target. And the word “beehive” directly relates to the prize. My wife, Jeannette, is a beginning apiarist or beekeeper. The winner of the contest wins one jar of her honey. (Note, we have no idea when this jar will be made, so the winner must be patient.)
Binocular - Yes, all observations, even of naked-eye objects, must be made with binoculars.
Byzantine – I just love the sound of the word, and it also reflects the unnecessarily complicated rules structure. These rules will keep me busy all winter, huzzah!
Battle – I really needed a word that starts with B just to make the alliteration work. If you can come up with a better b buzzword, you’ll get some points towards winning!
How It Works
- Periodically throughout the winter, and maybe even into spring, I’ll release a target by sending an email to the Yahoo list. Some will be easy, some will be hard. Hard targets are will be worth more points. I will release the target in the morning and I will only release a target if I think that it will be possible to observe the target that night.
- You need to observe the target with binoculars and write up an observation report.
- I’ll keep score, periodically annoucing the full score and sometimes just annoucing the leaders on the Yahoo list.
- I’ll present the honey at a CCAS meeting (pending approval of the Board, I guess; it has to be noted that they are hearing about this contest for the first time with this email…)
- Most observations must be made on the Cape. If you are traveling and want to make a few from your destination, that’s fine. But not too many, ok?
- I reserve the right to change the rules at any time, even while the contest is running. This can affect the leaders but I won’t ever make retroactive scoring changes, even if you wish I would!
Observation Reports
Write up your observation and email it to the CCAS yahoo group list. Obsering reports don’t need to be long. Tell us what target you saw, what equipment you used, how you found it, and most importantly, what it looked like!
Scoring
- You get 5 points for writing up an observation report the day of or the day after a target is released. After the second day, the next report by anyone gets 4 points, the one after that 3 points and so on. You will always get a point no matter how many people report.
- You get 1 bonus point for being the first to post your report. This is as measured by my Inbox.
- You get 1 bonus point for using an excessive amount of the letter “B” in your report. Silly, I know, but this is meant to a ball, full of laughs and fun. (Did you notice the awkward, but fully gratuitous b-word in the previous sentence?)
- You get 1/2 bonus point for making an apiarial reference in your report, 1 point if the reference is actually pertinant to the observation.
- Points for difficult objects will be announced along with the difficult objects.