by Rob Hawley
The transparency was fantastic. With my 10" f/10 SCT I was seeing down to 13.38. That is as close as I have come to the 14.5 theoretical limit of the scope. The seeing was another matter. The bands of Jupiter were wavy most of the night. Stars, especially close to the horizon, were fuzz.
I was mostly interested in deep sky stuff anyway. Aside from a quick peek at the GRS on Jupiter I mainly focused on M objects. Last night I visited M 77, 41, 104, 105, 79, 93, 96, 50, and 95. To cap it off I viewed M13 as it was rising about 2AM. This is my first year of viewing and the first time an object from last summer was visible now.
Two objects that I visited last night I highly recommend. Both were introduced to me last week at Houge Park. The first is NGC 2362 http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_search?v=2r&r=07+18+48.00&d=-24+57+00.0 &e=J2000&h=15.0&w=15.0&f=gif&c=none&fov=NONE&v3=
The second is a wonderful double star
RA (J2000.0): 07h 16.6m Dec (J2000.0): -23? 19' Tycho catalog number: TYC 6537-3290-1 Hipparcos number: HIP 35210 Henry Draper number: HD 56577 DM number: BD -23 0117 DM number: CD -23 05189 PPM number: PPM 252026 SAO number: SAO 173349 Bright star number: HR 2764 WDS designation: HJ 3945Position angle: 52? Separation: 26.8"
Magnitude of first component: 4.83 Magnitude of second component: 6.02 Spectrum: K3Ib dF0