OR Montebello OSP Wednesday 5/8

by Bob Jardine

'twasn't a bad night after all...

Early seeing was pretty terrible. Perhaps as bad as I've ever seen (in my short time). But it improved significantly as the night wore on, to where I'd rate it as pdg* by midnight. Similarly, transparency improved from around 4.5 at 10:30 (Leo, Bootes) to the high fives (Bootes) at midnight.

My program was mainly observing objects from the SAC 110 and RASC 110 ("best of the NGC") lists, concentrating on the Virgo area.

However, other highlights for me were:

M49 with binocs (10X50) for the first time...
Omega Centauri; surprisingly good view (10" Orion Newt/Dob with 12mm Nagler) given the poor seeing earlier; at culmination, it rose a full 2 degrees above the van across the parking lot from me! I think this was the best view I've ever had of Omega from the Bay Area.
a nice view of Centaurus A (5128); with AV I could pretty easily see the dark lane, running roughly North/South; what a huge, bright, and interesting galaxy this must be when seen from somewhere farther south!
NGC 5694 -- a very distant Globular in Hydra; according to one book I have, it is fully 110,000 LY away! no surprise, it was smaller and dimmer than your average GCs.

I was the last to leave, around 12:45 AM LMT.

I sure had fun! I hope everyone else did also.

(I won't see y'all this weekend, as I'm heading to Yosemite for an annual spring hike with some folks from work. Am I going to take the 'scope also? Duh.)

(* pdg = pretty darn good)