by Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky
| Location | OCA Observing site near Palomar Mountain CA |
|---|---|
| Date | 12/16/2001 01:30 - 05:30 UT |
| Temp | +4 to -3 C |
| Wind | Calm to Light |
| Seeing | 3 to 4 ( 1 to 10 scale ) |
| Telescope | TMB 180 f/9 Triplet on a AP 900GTO |
Seeing Saturday night (12/15/2001) was atrocious again out at the OCA site near Palomar Mountain. My streak of nights with sucky weather and/or terrible seeing with the TMB-180 continue unabated. Six months and counting. If take the 130EDT or 18 inch LITEBOX out, poof! Great weather. Go figure?
Darn thing really 'looks' impressive though. :) Did I mention it was cold? Minus 3 C. Well that's cold considering I been a California guy for 5 years now. And snow on the ground out at observing site (just a teeny bit)! It's at about 1000 meters ASL. First time I had to think about an ice scraper in five years. My observing pad had ice on it. I 'clubbed' it to death with my 'club'. (Club = Steering wheel lock device and self-defense item<g>.)
Froze my Orthos off. I packed it in about 9:30 LMT when the breeze started to kick up and the seeing still hadn't improved. I figured (rationalized?) "Why suffer for no reason aye?" Got in a good last look at C/2000 WM1 LINEAR before it dips too low for even my latitude. Nice comet! It looked best in 10x50's where I could trace the tail about a degree to the Northeast. In the 31mm terminagler, it's nucleus was well defined but the tail almost disappeared. Definitely the highlight of the evening.
I make copies of each month's S&T and Astronomy articles (for personal use only of course) for use under the start without trashing the magazine. I picked off all the objects in Sue French's Small Scope Sampler's for December 2001 and January 2002. No problem. Though calling a Blanco 1 or Do-Dz1 'clusters' might be going a bit far observationally. :) NGC 253 in particular looked very nice indeed with several noted dark lanes seeming to criss-cross or looking contorted near the center. Sometimes, though I know the perspectives are different, I think NGC 253 reminds me of a larger M82. And M74 in Pisces was cool. Transparency was good enough to see a hint of spiral structure. Or I got lucky and guessed the rotation direction. Honest, I really felt I saw a 'pinwheelish' like shape and said wrote I think it shows rotation 'this' way."
Then I looked it up and found out I was wrong. :( Until I remembered I was using a refractor with a star diagonal! :)
Everyone else was all a gah-gah about some near Earth asteroid and busily making movies with their CCDs. Guess it moved fast. I have a hard time getting excited about asteroids unless they are REALLY near! Yikes! =:O But in the OCA we have quite a few who are 'into' them.