Wednesday Night at Montebello

by Jay Freeman


I had my 6-inch f/8 AP refractor out, and was doing pretty well on mostly double stars. Seeing at that aperture was occasionally limiting, but I was separating doubles down in the range of one-and-a-small-fraction arc seconds easily, with plenty of dark space between them.

The weather was as iffy as it gets. When I arrived, just a few minutes after sunset, there was low scud in sight from east around through north, west, and back to south. But it never encroached on the parking lot. Temperature and humidity went to 4 C and 96 percent, then later the temperature rose to 6 C and the relative humidity dropped to 88 percent. My finder tended to dew at the worst part of the evening -- covering it with a mitten when not in use solved that problem -- but as the humidity dropped the dewing stopped.