| Reports | TAC | Join mailing list |
Last night, 8/13, was an opportunity not to be missed at Lick as the skies were to be excellent all night long. So I took my 10" DOB "Gus" with me. I work at Lick on the Vulcan Project and I have several opportunities during my nightly observing data runs to do some casual observing. And did I ever have a great time!
I set "Gus" up out in front of the 20 inch Astrograph. The Astrograph, and my work site, Crocker Dome, are located near each other at Tycho Brahe Peak on the top of Mt. Hamilton at Lick at about 4200 feet above sea level. As I predicted, the skies were absolutely magnificent all night long. So here are the details. Keep in mind that I was doing the casual viewing between "work" so I only had chunks of about 45 minutes each to look for stuff and besides, I had to tend to work activities full time after about midnight so the observing list might seem rather short. But the quality was what counted!
Observing, UCO Lick, Tycho Brahe Peak. Conditions Excellent, Moon New, sky glow very low, moisture content 24 % RH, temperature 14 degrees C. 10" DOB.
Began about 2145 hours 8/13.
Primary Target area Cygnus, Aquila, Capricornus.
Finished around 2400 hours 8/13
By the way, the Perseids were visible and saw some really large "Bolas" streaking across the sky. They probably interfered with my work image taking as we are doing 7 1/2 minute exposures. Doing the "audit" check of my images didn't show any trails but then again I didn't look at all the data.