Saturday, March 25th, '00 the sky didn't look very promising, but, I thought even if I couldn't use the telescope it would be fun being out with the gang (TAC observing group). This was the same star party Mark Wagner wrote about in his post Always The Messier Monster.
Shortly after sunset Jupiter was not showing much detail through the scope. The seeing was not very good. I couldn't even see the Cassini division in Saturn's rings. After about an hour the seeing was better but Saturn and Jupiter were mostly covered buy clouds. The Trapezium looked quite good but still not showing the first ring in the airy disc. The 5th ("E") star was easy to see but I couldn't see the 6th ("F") star. Richard N. brought his RV6 (6" f/8) with Dobs mount over to do a side by side with my AP 130EDT (130 mm f/8 APO refractor). He was using a little more power looking at the Trapezium. We could see four stars in the Trapezium with his reflector. I moved up to Sigma Orionis, I could see the small "4th" star in the 130EDT but it was very difficult in the RV6. Then Richard mentioned he didn't bring his better eyepieces. I let him use my 12mm Brandon and image changed very nicely. The 4th star was easy to see. The image was much like the one in my AP. Yes, there is a difference in the two images but image in the RV6 was very nice. We should have gotten back to looking at the Trapezium. I think the RV6 would have easily shown the 5th star with the Brandon eyepiece, or Richard's orthos if he had brought them.
It was fun looking through several of the other scopes. One an Orion/Vixen 120mm refractor. M42 was easy see in the 120mm. It was a low power eyepiece so the Trapezium was small but the stars were nice little points. A Nexstar 5 was giving fine views of M81 and M82. The stars in this Nexstar 5 looked like clean points of light. There was an AP 130EDF (130 mm f/6) APO refractor. Its owner was looking at different open clusters. They stood out clearly, cleanly against a very dark background.
By around 9pm the sky cleared, at least it was much better. I think there was still a little high, thin gunk. We had fun looking at some faint fuzzy galaxies through Mark's 18" Obsession. I used my scope to take a tour through Coma and Virgo. NGC4656 looked very nice in the little 5" APO but not quite as exciting as in an 18" Dobs. ;-) The brighter galaxies in Coma and Virgo were easy to see in the 5" AP. I moved up to Ursa and M81 and M82. Again, very nice. Next, I went for the Eskimo nebula in Gemini. It was easy to the brighter shell around the small bright center.
Mark's daughter, Mimi, found her last Messier object. She has outstanding eye sight. The object was there but I had a hard time seeing. I pulled out one of my Astro Cards with M101 and asked if she wanted to try finding it. She found it but it was not easy to see even in her Coulter 10" f/4.5.
Much of the rest of the evening, before the Moon came up, I spent borrowing photons and exchanging stories. I'm not sure how we got on the subject of food, but Jay Freeman had a most interesting description of the things he used to cook when he was in college. I hope after that Mimi still wants to go to college.
The wind was starting to blow harder and the moon was peeking over the clouds, we packed our equipment and headed home. A short but fun night.