by Jay Reynolds Freeman
Just got back from observing at Michelle's Sierra foothills site on Friday and Saturday evenings, 10 and 11 December, and thought I would do a brief heads-up for folks who are comparing weather here and there, while all relevant memories are still fresh.
Friday evening we had several waves of clouds pass through, but I managed to get in about three hours of quite good observing between late dusk and 11 PM, when it socked in solid. I left for my motel room; Michelle reported that it cleared for a frustrating half hour later that night, but for no more.
Saturday it stayed clear from well before sunset through till when I left the site at midnight. When I awoke Sunday, at about 10:30 AM, there were broken clouds obscuring much of the sky, but I don't know when it came in.
Both nights were calm and had temperatures down to freezing. Michelle's recording thermometer got 0 Celsius Friday/Saturday, and mine was down to 1 C by the time I left on the second night. Humidities were quite high -- I forgot to set up my min/max gadget Friday, but on Saturday night the relative humidity ascended to 87 percent and sat there. I had dewing on the unheated objectives of Harvey's finders, but the Kendrick heater and Orion FlexiShield kept the corrector plate clear.
There were fair amounts of so-so transparency early Friday evening, but in the interval before the final cloudout, I got a good naked-eye sighting of M33, which is not too shabby. It was that good most of Saturday, at least till when I left.
Because of the lack of wind, the cold was less bothersome than 0 C might suggest. On Saturday I was wearing, over my regular clothes, a sweat shirt, down vest, light lined windbreaker, down booties, ushanka, and down-filled gloves. I had disposable catalytic heaters in the booties and in my gloves, and stayed warm enough that there was no temptation to call it quits before I was tired. I had more clothes that I could have put on -- my Count Dracula cape and my powder pants -- but didn't. Michelle had her cabin heated up very toasty with its Franklin stove, too, and invited us in whenever we wanted to warm up. I logged 115 telescopic observations plus one more naked eye (M33) that night, so the cold was not enough to slow me down.
Details on what I observed later...