by Jane E. Smith
Thanks Robert, for the nice report. It was amusing to see that the long span of terrible skies resulted in similar behavior from the TAC-SAC group. A bunch of us gathered at Fiddletown on Saturday night: Steve Gottlieb and Ray Cash from the Bay Area, Alvin Huey and friend Steve, Jim Ster, Randy Muller, Allan Keller, Shneor Sherman and myself. Quite late in the evening a couple arrived from the Bay Area but the only name I recall was Joanie, and that she worked for Orion Telescopes.
For me, Saturday night was a "play" night. I spent most of the evening skipping around from Messier to Messier. I also did a fair stretch on the big planets, coming back to them several times during the evening as they neared, and passed, zenith. Then we had to all compare-and-contrast equipment with my new 3-6mm zoom pitted against Allan's 4mm UO orthoscopic. I think everyone pretty much agreed that the UO won hands down, but that the utility of the little zoom made it highly desirable. After that Shneor put his WideScan with blackened edges against Allan's which had not been blackened. No contest there... Shneor's edges made a significant improvement in contrast. Next it was the blackened-WideScan against Jim's 31mm Nagler. That was a tougher road to plow and I think Jim's 31mm edged ahead. Finally it was time for everyone to look for the Horsehead, found in Alvin's 22" first, then in Allan's 17.5" and finally in my 12.5", all with an H-Beta filter. And of course no observing night would be complete without some chatting, of which there was lots. In between all this activity I grabbed looks through 3 pairs of big binos that were there, one belonging to Shneor, another to Allan and a third st to a friend of Shneor's. I ended the evening cruising through Coma, Virgo and Leo ogling the galaxies, and took one last magnificent view of Jupiter through Allan's 17.5".
I can't say in all honesty that I did much serious work in this new moon, but I sure had a good time just being under a dark sky again.