Leonids at MB

by Nick Biunno

The area was packed last night cars where lined up and down the road. We arrived about 9:00pm and the site filled up around 11:00, Sky almost very clear even with the New Moon. Meifong and I met several other TAC members there, sorry but have hard time remember names. GIve me some time. There was a good lecture going on two sites down from our setup and we listened in and learned something, thanks.

The show began about 2:30 am, and while not really counting there was about two per minute at the peak. A group next to our set-up was in a 360 ring and I heard a count of about of about 50 over the space of about 15 to 20 minute. A few were spectacular with long ionization vapor trails. Not to bad even with a full moon.

Meifong and I log M35 and M37 first views to our collection of Messier objects. This bring our total Messier objects observed with our 10' Dob up to a whopping 10. Would gone for M36 but there were many people wanting to see objects so Buddy (our telescope) didn't mind give them some good views.

Saturn was farely stable high up around 3:30 am and we did some high power (300x so far) observing. I believe I can almost see three distinct rings last night. With some better eye pieces and finer collimation think this 10" mirror will do pretty good.

Speaking of high power observing, I am looking into several tracking options with a Dob mount. If anyone is tracking with a Dob would like hear what you have done.

Thanks, and see you at Montebello.