by Jane Houston Jones
We arrived at 7:30 p.m. Friday night, and opened the observatory to let the bats out. Some friends from work joined us and I gave my Milky Way talk - the one I was to present to the public Saturday night.
It was great for our friends to see the Milky Way in the twilight, then to hear the talk, then go out and see it again through binos, naked eye and through the telescopes. Some of our friends brought a 10-inch f/7.3 dobclassdob, and a Meade 8 inch sct. The other friends just brought cocoa and chocolate/orange angle food cake and cookies. :-) It's great to have friends!
The temp was 58 all night - from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. inside the observatory. There were no clouds, and the entire valleys were blanketed in that nice fog. The secondary mirror of the 30-inch did get dew on it around midnight or so.
At 1:30 we watched the moon rise, by walking up to the ridge. Then we put the telescope to bed.
Objects of interest Friday night: We toured up the Milky Way from the Bug nebula in Scorpius up to M-11. Also Neptune - two moons suspected and sketched...will be verified later. Comet Hoenig in CassLacertaCygnus was nice, a sort of typical cometary diffuse blob, with a central brightening which was elongated. It was nice to spot a newly discovered mag 9.9 comet.
We were back in our room at the San Juan Inn at 3:00 a.m., and then at about noon Saturday we joined our pals for a trip to Pinnacles National Monument, and a nice 3 hour hike. I sent an this note to TAC from our hotel at noon Saturday, but it didn't make it.