After some waiting, a few fellow TAC members showed up at the Montebello Open Space (MOS). After the initial greetings, observers went to work setting up equipment. I of course had brought my Mighty Meade Maksutov, which is of course my little 7" LX 50.

After setting up and aligning to the pole, I realized that I had left all but one eyepiece at home on my desk. Thanks to Mark Wagner, who lent me a nice 50 mm 2" Plossl (about 53X), I was able to do a little galaxy hunting. First things first. I look ed at Mercury, which is the first time I have actually tried to do some serious observation of this elusive little world. This was a disaster because the optics had not reached thermal equilibrium. It did look like a nice blob of twinkling something. W hile waiting for the optics to cool, I borrowed a tripod from Akkana and put the trusty OM-1 and 50mm lens to work taking some pictures of the comet. All of the shots were fixed tripod shots ranging in duration from 10 to 2!0 seconds with Royal Gold 1000. She even agreed to pose for a few shots as did Mark while using his trusty 14.5" Dobsonian. I also tried a few star field shots of Orion. I hope I get something so people will stop bothering me for comet pictures!

The observing group (Akkana, Mark, Dave?, and myself) also watched the space station Mir pass overhead. About this time the optics had cooled enough for me to hunt some galaxies. First was M65 and 66, quickly becoming old friends. They were a nice pair in the 7" at 53X. Next I shifted my attention to some NGC objects, just to see if I could see them. NGC 3521 was a nice oval with a bright center. My copy of the ARIZ2000 database lists its magnitude as 10.5, while my next target NGC3115 is listed as magnitude 11.0. This looked like a fuzzy star surrounded by a very dim glow. Next, the pairs NGC 3166 and 3169, both listed as magnitude 11.5, showed as faint soft glows in a nice field of stars. After the other observers had had a peek, Mark, after a few minutes, found them in his 14.5" and Akkana found them in her 10". It was interesting to note the difference between the views in the three telescopes. It was just as one might expect, the 10" beat the 7", while the 14! .5" beat the 10".

About this time, the various observers used the stars in Ursa Minor to estimate the limiting magnitude. I could see all of the stars in the Little Dipper with the dimmest being about magnitude 5.0. Mark could see what he claimed was one of about magnitu de 6.0 and Akkana was not sure. Both of them it seems could see dimmer stars than I could :(.

The evening wrapped up with a peek at a somewhat washed out M51, M3, and M53(?) through Mark's 14.5. M3 looked really nice.

Overall, not a bad night except we must talk to P, G, & E about all those &^%@#!! lights!