by Andrew Pierce
I always wear tennis shoes and no tie to work on Friday, no matter what is scheduled. As a traditionalist I feel bound to observe casual Friday whether it seems like a good idea or not. The same spirit got me up to Montebello last night for the traditional Wednesday session.
I arrived at about 7:10 to an empty lot. It was about 40 degrees, dry and windy. The winds came in intermittent strong gusts. My heavy 9.25 inch SCT on a ponderous fork mount did OK, though using the dew shield was out of the question.
I was rewarded with one of the best astronomical sights I've ever seen -- Comet Ikeya-Zhang against the dark western horizon at Montebello. Although it was lower in the sky than the last time I saw it, on Mach 2, it is also much brighter and better defined. There is a largish bright area surrounded by a coma and a tail that broadened into what might be two tails. The tail looked to be about 2.5 degrees at first, though it got shorter as the comet sank into the horizon.
It's hard to describe how beautiful it looked at low power in my scope. It also looked great in the finder and my 15x70 binos. I tried to photograph it but technical and equipment problems with both my 35 mm camera and a digital camera ruled that out. I'll try again Friday on that.
Other memorable sights were NGC 2359 Thor's helmet, which was all but invisible without a nebula filter, M42/43, and M81/82. Thanks to darker than usual conditions at Montebello M82 was particularly detailed.
As puffy white clouds started to roll in around 8:30 I just cherry picked whatever was in view. The clouds arrived almost on cue at the time predicted by the Clear Sky Clock.
I packed up and left around 9:00 and was home by 9:30. As I drove down the hill it became completely clear and vistas of Orion around several bends told me I had made a noble and effective sacrifice. Too bad no one was there to benefit from it.
In retrospect windy conditions do make it colder at Montebello -- it was almost 10 degrees colder than in the flats, but the very clear air made for darker and more esthetically pleasing views. On the drive down even the lights of San Jose looked better than usual. Can't comment on seeing as the winds made high magnification views impractical in any event.