Conditions at Coe were not the best by any means last night, but it was still great to be in the company of a number of local folk for a few hours on Astronomy Day, 2001. About ten of us met up in the overflow lot to share the night sky, and even though things looked pretty promising when we arrived, the wind was blowing at a fair clip, which made the temperature feel *very* cold. (Rich Neuschaefer was measuring the wind speed with a pretty cool toy. Uh, no pun intended.)
Telescopes at the lot covered a wide gamut, from Eric Ayres' 4" Orion/Vixen 102ED APO, to Rich Neuschaefer's 15" Obsession. Several SCTs were set up as well, along with additional Newts, so it was a good showing for a variety of instruments.
As is usual for Coe, the wind died down as the sun was setting, but clouds and haze had started building up in the west well before sunset; we watched the sun set behind a very mucky veil in the western sky. As soon as the stars started to show themselves, a good third of the sky had some level of haze or gunk to it, which continued to increase until I departed about 11:40pm. This was not a night for faint-fuzzy hunting in Virgo, as I'd originally planned, and most of us just focused on brighter Messier objects. In general, conditions were poor at best, with seeing matching the transparency. (I hope things improved after my departure.)
I had my 12.5" Starmaster EL with me, and used a 17mm T4 Nagler/Paracorr combination for all my observing. Besides Polaris and Castor, the only items I observed this evening were:
Canes Venatici: M51, M3, M63, M94 and M106
Leo: M65/M66/NGC3628, M95, M96, M105, NGC2903 and NGC3190/93 (NGC3185 was "sort of there," but not loggable.)
Virgo: M104, M49, M61, M84 and M86 [That's it. See... I told you it was poor at best!] Others present with a bit more moxie, however, did chase after other objects. <grin>
Ursa Major: M97, M108 and M109.
Hercules: M13 and M92
That was it for me. Nothing else logged. A rather poor showing for an official Astronomy Day, but I really enjoyed the company of all present. We all shared views through our instruments, passed around eyepieces ... and grumbled about rumors of fine skies at The Peak. ;)
Regardless from where you TACos observed last night, I hope everyone made it home safe and sound. :)