by Marek Cichanski
After all of the fog, and after all of my grousing about said fog, the Montebello weather gods finally handed us a great one on Tuesday night.
Conditions were really good at MB. Clear skies, no fog, no cirrus. Very warm, too. I think that it was between 70 and 75 when James Turley and I closed the place down at 2. There had been some breeze at sunset, but it was nice and calm during the night - just the gentlest body-temperature breeze. Very comfortable.
Glenn Hirsch was there with his 8" dob, and a couple of friends (relations?) in tow. He had much fun showing them the constellations, Messiers, etc... George Feliz and son were there, bagging Messiers and double stars with their nice 6" dob and TV-85. Kevin Zahnle showed up with his neat 10" Teleport, James had his 4" ED, and I had my mod-ed-up XT10.
Sky conditions were generally pretty good, too. Seeing was fairly good, although I can't really say, because I didn't do much high-magnification stuff. Transparency and sky darkness were pretty good by Montebello standards. The light dome was rather less prominent than usual, which surprised us, since we didn't think that there was valley fog. Upon driving down the hill, it turned out that there was a moderate temperature inversion, and some hazy gunk was present over the valley. Well, this gunk was NOT present at MB, at least not in any significant quantity, and it kept a surprising amount of light pollution from scattering upward.
I worked on my usual task, H400 galaxies. I think that the brass ring is now in sight - I can probably finish the list this year. Last night, I finished Virgo. It was great - I pecked around the edges, and then went for the kill along Markarian's Chain. Did a few mopping-up operations in Leo and Coma B, and that was that. Now it's on to UMa. I'm not out of the woods yet - not by a long shot, but at least I've got a better chance of finishing this year. Another good night or two at Fremont Peak sometime in the next month, and I think I can polish off UMa.
I'm surprised how much fun I get from this 'search and destroy' observing. Galaxies turn out to be pretty simple to log. You find it, spot it, and then classify it by size, brightness, shape, nucleus, orientation, and maybe make a guess at galaxy type. Once you have your sub-categories memorized, you can do a galaxy in 20 seconds with a dictaphone, no problem. Then spend another minute or two on it with averted vision if you want, and that's that. With a 10", there isn't much more to see. With the laptop and correct-image finder, it's possible to get to the next galaxy in a minute or two if I'm lucky. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing. You can cut a swath through a list like the H400 real fast this way, if you want. Of course, there's Transcription Purgatory later, but during the night, it's Shock and Awe time.
After a few hours with the galaxies, it was Eye Candy time. I love this time of year. By this time, James and I had the place to ourselves, and we had a ball looking at summer Milky Way eye candy, and talking about everything under the sun. We were borrowing eyepieces from each other - he was loving the 9mm T6 Nag as used in his refractor, and I was developing a serious relationship with the 17mm T4 Nag in the focuser of my XT10.
Packed up in 70 degree temps, locked the gate behind us at 2, and headed downhill. Life is good. Weather gods smiled. Rolled a seven.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 16, 2004 11:14:59 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 04, 2005 19:22:07 PT