Last one out of Dino 5/26

by Matthew Marcus


Despite the crappy seeing I stuck it out at Dino until it started to get light in the East. I'm working through the section of the H400 list which is full of objects in Sag at dec < -20deg and I'm going to be away for the next new moon (you can guess why). Therefore, I figured that I'd better get while the getting was good or else wait until next summer. Therefore, I stayed after James T. and everybody else buggered off, the wusses. The seeing improved somewhat in the late going and entered an odd mode in which puffs of really bad air would alternate with seeing which was merely marginal. The views of globs started to get better and M11 was looking good, so I tried Mars. No luck. Even with a filter (Lumicon neb filter, which does interesting things to planets), all I saw was a blank disk. After doing a batch of Mag 11 globs, I took in some eye candy before packing up. I'd forgotten just how spectacular the Sag region of the Milky way really is. I left tired, but happy and with 30 more pages to put in my log. One of these was done at the beginning of the night when Albert showed off 3C273 in his Dob and lent me a finder picture so I could get it in my C8.

BTW, they seem to be doing a new thing at the dam - an orangy-red flashing light and rotating beacon at the far side. This quit a little after sunset, much to everyone's relief. My C8 was ill-placed to investigate these lights, but my Ranger showed that the flasher was on a mast atop a building and the beacon was rotating near ground level on the side of a hill. Aperture may win, but there's something to be said for a refractor you can pick up and move with one hand.