by Ivor Barker
After doing the Thanksgiving thing at Disney Land, I arrived back at Morgan Hill at 2:30 pm just in time to load my equipment in to my truck and head on up to Coe with Ben, my 9 year old.
When I parked up, there were a few early starters already setting up, I mulled around a while debating the clouds and finally decided, what the hay I'll give it a go.
I am glad I did, as it got dark there were enough gaps in the cloud to polar align and it slowly cleared enough to do some serious imaging, I borrowed a 3.3 focal reducer from Eric and set about continuing my Messier project (Thanks Paul Le F. for the idea).
In between the clouds the seeing was remarkably clear and steady and as the fog came in down in the valley it was really dark. I managed a few long exposures before the wind picked up and I had to cut my exposure times down to get between gusts.
Here are some of the images from Saturday night:
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m1color.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/ic434color.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m108.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m63.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m51.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m35.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m101.jpg
http://www.employees.org/~ibarker/Astronomy/images/m96.jpg
The wind really started to come up at around 4:30-5:00 am, so I packed up and headed down the hill.
A really good night, including a visit from one of the Coyotes.
Cheers !!
