by Rich Neuschaefer
This was another of the concert nights. I'll make this a short report and try to give more detail later.
I was using my AP 155 mm f/7 EDFS APO refractor. Early in the evening I took a quick look at the Double Double. It split cleanly at less than 100x. I believe Antares had transited, I thought it would be a good test of the seeing. The little companion of Antares was easy to see. Antares was showing a few defraction rings and the companion was boldly showing at about the 10 o'clock position. I would rate the seeing close to an 8 of 10.
We looked at a number of objects. Mars cleared the trees relatively late for me but that was fine. By that time it was 25 or 30 degrees up. There was a long horizontal dark mark from the "left" side of Mars (my scope was showing it reversed left to right and correct up and down) with a light area around it. The was lots of more subtle dark marking over much of the rest of the disc. I made a quick drawing. We had clouds move in around 1am. I gave up after sucker holes were too few.
The seeing when I was looking at Mars was a maybe 7.5. I was using a 7mm Pentax SMC-XL with a 2x TV barlow giving about 310x.
There was a temperature inversion at Lick. It would guess it was around 70 deg F. The wind was relatively light. A very nice night.