Saturday Night 5/15 at IHOP

by Shneor Sherman

We had a small but select group: Alvin Huey and families of colleagues from work with a 30" (used later by Brian Zehring), Gregg Blandin with his 25", me (22") Bill Chandler (16") and Ken Mason (10") - average aperture 20.6"...and that's not counting the 22" that Brian brought but did not set up.

Although there were clouds here and there throughout the night, there were momemts of excellent seeing and transparency. Jupiter was amazing shortly after sunset, with detais visible along the edges of the bands at 248x. Comet NEAT was stunning early on and later, particularly in Bill's binos (10x50?) where the tail was clearly visible and I kicked myself for leaving my 25x100s home. A few other highlights - Abell 39, a ghostly oval in the 30" and the 25"; the Swan through my binoviewer; M51 at the zenigh and M101 clearly showing t's arms and a couple of HII regions; a clear southern sky down to the horizon at times (found a couple of objects I have yet to look up); and a couple of globulars in the same field of view in Sagittarius. Lots of other nice views, but by 2:30 a.m. the sky washed out and we packed it in.

How was Fiddletown?

Posted on tac-sac May 16, 2004 16:31:54 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 19:08:40 PT