by Kevin
Dino was fair on Saturday night. The seeing was soft for most of the evening, although it was mostly dry with only light gusts of wind until after midnight. I didn't do an official count of scopes, but I think 10 to 12 sounds about right. Denny and Angel left kind of early due to poor seeing. Phil Terzian and others filtered out somewhere between 11:00pm and 1:00 am. In the wee hours, the wind picked up (within moments of moonset, of course) and stayed that way except for occasional calmer moments. At that time there were only four of us left: Julius Szakacs, Steve Winslow, Jim Feldhouse and your humble correspondent. When I left at 2:45am, Jim and Steve were still observing. Oh, by the way, seeing was so poor along the southern horizon that Antares was mistaken for Mars due to its reddish disk many arcseconds in diameter.
I was poking around the Virgo Cluster with forays into Hydra and Centaurus. I was able to see NGC 5128 just over the southern horizon -- looks like a coffee bean if you ask me. We were all impressed by M13 in Jim's 16-inch Dob and the I3 eyepiece. I still have a spot in my eye from that one!
No aurora was seen, although I kept checking the northwest to northeast every 15 minutes or so.
All in all, a fun night. I logged quite a few objects, but none looked spectacular. Maybe the wind is finally starting to arrive at Dino.