by Jürgen Wolf
Temps in the 40s at sunset and gusty winds. I hesitated setting up because of the dust blowing across the parking lot but badly wanted those test shots of 9P Tempel in various color bands (peparing for the 'deep impact'). So I got it going (AP155, 1200 mount, ST7). Focusing was a challenge, inconsistent results with @focus by 25 to 50 microns. Then tried to autoguide (guidescope 80/910 with ST402) ... ~10th mag guide star at 4 sec filled half the guide box of 32 x 32 pixels at 1.7 arcsec/pixel, no better situation with 7th mag star at 1 sec. I have never seen such bad seeing. That was no stars but mothballs. Guide errors ranged up to about 3 pixels. Got the comet with 2 min exposures in B,V,R,Is,Iz but with miserable guiding.
Then the Palo Alto fire department kicked in: 3 fire engines on the parking lot (white and other lights flashing) marking a helicopter landing spot ... a car accident on Page Mill -cover your scope! The 'dust devils' of that boy scout group earlier was just nothing compared. Fortunately, I had a tarp with me. The rescue chopper tried at least three aproaches but never landed, winds were too high. The fire chief apologized for the disturbance.
I teared down and packed to go home - fog was creeping over the skyline ridge and I was freezing. Some nice astro (TAC?) folks came back to the parking lot after they had left, telling me that Page Mill was still blocked by the rescue teams. So I drove through the patchy fog on Skyline Blvd back home.
Maybe I need a dry and 'safe' inland observing site for deep impact.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 05, 2005 02:11:02 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 24, 2005 10:04:57 PT