Sleepless in Mendocino
By Mike Shade

The long photographic run in the Mendocino National Forest with John Hales was in general a success. I arrived Thursday August 13 to temperatures in the high 90s with humidity in the low 20% range. The weather seemed great for astronomy and indeed it was for the first few days. However, this is California and El Nino so the normal is not to be expected. True to form the weather got weird. By Wednesday we had temperatures in the low 50s and a temperature corrected humidity of 99% (I have never fogged the secondary of my NGT-18 until now). The fog on the secondary of coursed ruined a number of promising pictures. I was able to rig a dew zapping device from a dew zapper for a C-11. This seemed to work OK. The new motor on the NGT-18 worked better than the last one but it is still not perfect so I will be on the phone again with JMI complaining about something....John seemed to be having good luck for once (rare for him). He shot a number of pictures. I shot M13, M92, the central section of M31, the Vail, NGC7331 and Stephans Quintet, NGC6888, NGC6946, M33, M45, IC1318, NGC7380, NGC7635, NGC891, and a few telephoto shots of Cygnus. Since I am using 400 film and an autoguider, I suspect the results should be impressive. All in all, a good trip (it has to be I averaged 5 hours of sleep a night). I will be returning in September to shoot some winter stuff. Now, if the weather cooperates...