by Julius Szakacs
Five observer showed up at Del Valle Saturday night. Richard with his 10" home made DOB, one 11" Star Master, a C9.25, a 6" Intes MN and my 8" LX200. The seeing was so-so, with occasional light wind picking up. Del Valle has it's light pollution problem from West and North and getting worst as the two cities expanding nearby.
As the evening went by, I decided to set-up my TV Pronto next to my LX200, just for fun. I all ways like to compare, how a smaller scope can keep up with the 8" brother on DS object. Also, I want it to try out my new Pentax 40mm LX eyepiece, which gives me 5.5 deg field in the Pronto. Wow, what a super finder! As I set it up and not pointing purposely at anything, I saw, what it looks like a big, bright globular cluster next to Draco's head in my Pronto. Every body pointed his scope at this object and searching on Richard's laptop, we could not identified it. It must be a Comet, since it didn't show any detail, like a cluster do.
We got exited the we may discovered a new comet, since these things can pop up from no where. For a minute, Dave was gona use his cell phone, to report it, but it don't work from Del Valle. We were debating, how we gona call this comet, combining our names together and we were laughing. Than it poped in my mined, that Comet I-Z is circum polar and the last time I seen it, had a long tail and was above Cassiopeia. Others said "No, can't be, it all ready went down, is it? Than we had a good laugh, Yes. it's Comet I-Z near Dracos head. Last time I seen it, it had a long tail, now, it only showed up as big fuzzy patch, fooling us.
After midnight everybody pact up and went home.
It was a fun time at Del Valle.