Fiddletown

by Darrell Lee

Matt described it pretty well. Shneor and Alvin were there with their 22" scopes. Greg and I had 10" Dobs. Bob (with Stellarvue SV4 on Orion Atlas mountand I (with 10" Schmidt-Newtonian on LXD75 mount) were imaging. Matt brought a 7" Maksutov. Bruce (I may have gotten Greg and Bruce switched) had a fork-mounted Celestron (9.25? 11?). Tony threw an Orion Starblast in the back of his truck and followed Bob up for his first time at Fiddletown.

I would have considered the viewing well below average, except for it being only the third time this year I've been under clear dark skies, and the year is chronologically 1/3 over ;-) Dim fuzzies really looked dim and fuzzy last night. We couldn't make out much of the summer Milky Way between Cygnus and Sagittarius. I couldn't even see color in Antares or Betelguese with the naked eye. Sacramento sky glow was BAD. It was pretty difficult to believe Fiddletown is supposed to be a dark sky site last night.

I needed a dew heater and straps for the Telrad and one for the corrector plate on my Schimdt-Newtonian, but my Dob's secondary was dew-free. Its Telrad dewed up, but not badly.

I imaged M101, M81/M82, and the Ring Nebula last night. Outstanding results, at least compared to the results I typically get from my back yard.

Posted on tac-sac Apr 10, 2005 11:41:42 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Apr 10, 2005 20:01:11 PT