by Kevin Schuerman
I had a brief observing session last night with the Brandon 94mm semi-apo on a Vixen Super Polaris. Comet Machholz was large and fairly bright, despite the thin cirrus I was looking through. A stellar nucleus was seen in the coma. The coma itself appeared distinctly non-round with more of the coma to the E and SE of the nucleus. I did not see a tail. The only other object I looked at was Saturn. At 168x, the planet was very steady, Cassini's Division was razor-sharp, the shadow of the planet on the rings was small and equal on both sides, and the southern hemisphere shading was very distinct. In fact, the ball of the planet looked darker to me than it usually does, and I'm not sure why. I was debating whether or not to drag out more aperture, but the dampness and thickening cirrus won, so I decided to call it a night and savor the views that I had.
It was nice to spend a little time under the stars and get something other than a binocular view of Comet Machholz!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jan 13, 2005 12:24:43 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 27, 2005 21:08:58 PT