by Jamie Dillon
My suspicion has been proven, that certain members of this gang are made of sterner stuff than I am. Albert and Steve filed reports yesterday. Now I was capable of logging on and reading, but last night I couldn't have written a report, no no. Way past that, the tone of the notes from LSA was "oh, the weather was kinda so-so, but everything was hunky dory."
It was frigid, the dew was freezing by midnight, plenty of it too. As I was collapsing into my warm pillow last night it occurred to me out loud, "Wonder if this could be partly sometimes a guy thing?" Jo in her East coast accent said, "Yyyyathink?"
I'd heard tales of dew freezing on OTA's and logbooks and had crossed myself and thought, not for me. Now that's empirically confirmed. To be sure, we don't know our limits till we test them. Riiiiight.
That being said, the skies were gorgeous, the Milky Way put on a dazzling show. Company was superb. And I got to explore a constellation that had been a name only, Lacerta. It looks like a little lizard! Skies at Lake San Antonio were dark enough for the whole shape to stand out, between Pegasus' front legs and Cepheus. I'd logged NGC 6934 in Delphinus first, a bright tight distant (?) globular, just showing granularity at 210x. Showed it to Liam. He'd been exploring with the binocs. Then showed him the Double Cluster for eye dessert, tucked him in and started the Lizard-fu.
This was with Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig and a 6mm Radian.
I was following Sue French from the November Sky and Telescope verbatim. The surprise here was IC 1434, a very pretty cluster, with tendrils of stars trailing from a bright core. Nilesh hit it when he said it looks like a kite. NGC 7243 looked like a set of interlinked wedges, interesting pattern, a whole degree across. But NGC 7209, rounding out the bill, is a cruel dim little thing. Matched the sketch and photo from the French's guide, as well as exact position. There's an S-shape there, but otherwise no dazzle. Glad I had a new sketch of IC 1434 sitting there.
That shadow transit of Ganymede was remarkable, all right. I'd caught the entry early on, scratched my head over the moon being offline from the other 3, didn't say anything. Interesting dimpling at the start. By the time James sang out, we had some show going. Gortatowsky was right when he said Ganymede showed detail, I could see a rounding effect and darkening on the following edge. Mark brought it up at the same time. Graceful path along the planet's rim.
None of us knew why Ganymede was so far south of the line of the other moons. Anyone have a clue?
The bravery award goes to Nilesh Shah, one of the most genuinely intrepid humans I've ever met. Being from the tropics, unused to weather anything like this, he maintained a personality into the next day.
Saturday evening we had a visit from a polite speckled wild sow, and the next morning a doe and an older fawn came right up to Liam, within 5 yds, then later visited the rest of us tea drinkers.
Ah, this fine madness.