by Rich Neuschaefer
Saturday, June 8th, there was an orientation meeting for people volunteering to help with the Lick Observatory summer programs for the public. Lick sells tickets to these events. There isn't much space for parking. I think most of the events are sold out. You can check by calling the Lick Visitors Center.
It was windy and cold. The sky was relatively clear. This isn't unusual for Lick. What was unusual was the poor seeing. The Lick staff astronomer did her best to focus the 36" refractor but the stars remained fuzzy. One of her specialities is adaptive optics, an active program at Lick, so she knows poor seeing when it happens.
We looked at M3, M104 and M101. Even with a 55mm plossl eyepiece the magnification was great enough that M3 more than filled the field. Even with the poor seeing M3 was still an amazing "explosion" of stars. Even M104 stretched close to the edge of field. M104 showed a nice bright nucleus and a lumpy dust lane. M101 is so large it was maybe twice the size of the field. We could see the nucleus and a little arm structure. One advantage with a large telescope the nucleas of galaxies often look much more stellar than through a small telescope.
It was an fun night. The people on Lick staff are outstanding.