by Larry Snyder
Jim Ster wrote:
Despite some very poor seeing most of the time, we were able to enjoy some moments of a few pleasing views including some colored banding in Jupiter and the green hues of the Great Orion Nebula.
Not being free to travel to HGO this weekend, for the first time since moving away from my dark site in the country last March, I set up the telescope here at my new place inside the Davis city limits. I have a back yard about the size of a tandem coffin, and trees only barely mask the lights from the apartment complex across Sycamore Lane. But even so, it turned out to be quite a good evening for the large planets and for the gas clouds in Orion.
At first I nearly gave up since everything was softand turbulent, but leaving the thing alone outside for an hour with the fan running changed the views dramatically. By midnight, all the little particularities I saw in Saturn's ring structure on a few marvelous late-fall evenings at HGO last year returned, nearly in the same detail, clear and fairly steady. And by one o'clock, the filimentary structure of the Orion clouds showed the same distinct hues Jim noted up where he was set up.
I wish now I'd taken the time to set up late last Firday night, when we had that marvelous clearing in the first cold night following the rains.