by Dan Wright
Nice night at Coyote Saturday. My first time there. Jumbo boat-sized parking on a clean paved surface, friendly Rangers and Rangerettes, bathroom and drinking fountain right near, idyllic mountains, trees, and lake scenery, and pretty dark skies. Overheard comments:
"Iridium flare above Vega""ISS pass"
"I'm tracking it"
"Me too""I thought it was a cloud until I realized it was the Milky Way"
"Best Milky Way we've had all summer"
"Those headlights are definitely an issue ... maybe some orange traffic cones"
"I was looking at the dumbbell and this satellite flew right through the eyepiece"
"I feels like it's gotten 5 degrees *warmer*"
"And the wind's died down"
Bummer I had to leave early (had to work 6 AM Sunday; 7x24 Tech Support at my company). But I guess the moon was bound to come up soon anyway. Sorry about those brake lights; before it will shift out of Park, my automatic requires a foot on the brake pedal ... gaffer's tape next time.
Scott: Nice comparing LX200's and eyepieces with you. That was really funny,
when we were raving about the bright contrasty views of globulars through that one eyepiece, and afterwards we discovered it was merely the Meade 26mm that comes standard!
Here are some people-pictures I took before dark:
http://home.earthlink.net/~danwri/TAC/coyote6_29.htm
Let's do it again soon.