Montebello 6/5/2004, A silly target from +37.4N: Omega Centauri

by Richard Crisp

The session was nice out there. The weather was pleasant, there was a decent sized crowd. I think there must have been at least a dozen scopes set up and probably a few more than that. I saw Marek, Rich N. Craig Colvin, Pete Santangeli, Mark Barada, Dennis Steele, Mark Burger, Michael Portuesi and several others who's names I am sorry to say I cannot recall off the top of the head.

I heard one coyote singing a tad just after dark, probably whimpering because he didn't have any of Phil C's cookies. Surprisingly when the moon rose really bright around 1am or so, I didn't hear any more coyotes. That was a bit of a surprise. The temps were comfortable and the transparency was pretty good. The seeing was not great but not bad either, sort of so so. There was a bit of wind that would pick up and then lay for a while during the time I was there. I guess the last of us packed it in about 1:30 or so.

I had an unexpected bonus imaging opportunity. I finished my polar alignment quicker than I had expected so I decided to point the scope at Omega Centauri and see what happened. To my surprise I managed to take a crummy image of it when it transited about 9:30pm. At transit it was about 4 degrees up from the horizon. Totally in the muck.

I used an Ha filter to try to cut out some of the muck. Here's the result.

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/omega_centarui_from_37_page.htm

After that I took two more hours worth of data for Sharpless 2-155 (aka "Cave Nebula" or Caldwell 9). That takes me up to three hours and 40 minutes total exposure time:

http://www.rdcrisp.darkhorizons.org/sharpless_2_155_page.htm

Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 06, 2004 17:09:59 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 12, 2004 21:52:32 PT