A Beautiful Night...

by Bob Czerwinski

It was a *beautiful* night last night; Bruce Jensen's sky predictions were right on the money.

About 10:00pm I set up the TV-101 in my heavily light-polluted San Jose backyard, trying to forget that the limiting magnitude from there is only 3.9. <grin>

Two sound-walls (Hwy 87 & Branham Ln) severely restrict my view of the sky, so I concentrated primarily on Jupiter, Saturn and a few of the brighter Messier/NGC objects. The seeing was wonderful, and I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with eyepiece/barlow combinations.

I really had a blast, finally calling it quits about 1:30am. I may be a bit sleep-deprived today, but the views were well worth it. Hope many of you were also able to glance up last night as well. (Thanks for the heads-up, Bruce!)

Jim Ferreira wrote:

I agree totally! Did you watch the transit of Europa? Most excellent!

You bet, Jim! At least for the first hour or so. Don't remember the exact time it started (wasn't watching my watch ), but I think it must have been around midnight, or maybe a bit later. Anyone know for sure? All I know is that it was 1:57am when my head hit the pillowzzzzzzzzzzzz!