A real brief (but REAL) OR

by Jeff Gortatowsky


I wheeled the 11 inch starmaster into the cold driveway (41F) for a look see last night after an arctic cold front came through. Time was about 10pm to 12am local on the 11th or 06:00UT to 08:00UT on the 12th.

Very nice seeing. I'd say sometimes 3, other times a 4 on Jeff's arbitrary 1-5 scale. Is that the norm? Surprised me. Quite clear. I could see from my driveway a wonderful view of Saturn with the 141x 9mm Nagler. I could even hold Enceladus though nearby Mimas eluded me once again. Catching Enceladus is a prize that had to mean seeing was fairly good. Rhea, Dione, Tethys, and of course Titan were child's play. Iapatus gave me a problem not in that I don't think I saw it, just ID'ing the star patterns to make sure which was which gave me a tad of trouble under our mag 4 skies (overhead) with a nearly full moon close by.

I took a gander over at the moon, and the area highlighted was the area near Aristarcus and Herodotus. "Vallis Shoteri". (most of these are new to me since I don't usually look at the moon, but may change that!) This semi circular long narrow channel was fascinating as was the Montes Agricola to it's NW. At the sun angle Rimas Marius to the S/SW was not seen. I also barlowed up the 9mm using an AP barcon (like 2x with no image degradation!) to really hone in on this area. Another interesting site (and sight) in the SW on the terminator was the huge shadow cast by a mountain at the junction of Nasmyth, Wargentin, and Phocylides. The mountain as far as I can tell is not named. But the shadow it cut to the SW across the junction of Wargentin and Phocylides as unmistakable. And the odd shape of Schiller! Never noticed it before. Like a glacing blow made a odd peanut.

Realizing all my charts for the AL Doubles list were for constellations setting over L.A, and not feeling like going inside and make a few new ones, I finished up with Castor. Always a treat. I easily made the figure 8 of primary and secondary using a Takahashi 18mm ortho and when barlowed with a TV 1.8x barlow the split was clean as a whistle. Of course the 3rd star roughly south of those two was an easy pick off. Seemed ruddy colored to me.

So there. A real live OR. Not much. But something.

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Posted on bigdog Mar 12, 2006 13:59:40 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 13, 2006 22:54:40 PT