Montello

by dennis steele


I arrived at MB at sunset to find two of the "regulars" setting up their scopes. Doug's telescopes was an absolutely beautiful 18" reflector of his own design and build. It was really a nice homemade scope.

All told, we had about 7 or 8 guys up on the hill for the evening. One of the folks, Christopher, brought along a temperature/dew gauge. Throughout the evening, he'd announce the temerature and dew!! It was interesting and fun. Toward the end of the evening, it was 36-degrees with 76% dew!!

I tried out my new TeleVue 102 for the second time, and took a look at some of the cool stuff the others were finding (I gotta get better learning about the Winter sky!). There was a bit of dew, but dew shields kept things mostly dry. One of the guys (sorry I didn't get his name), has a C9.25 without a dew shield. I think he was kinda skunked a bit, but mostly, it wasn't too bad.

I thought I'd be leaving about 10 p.m., but it wasn't until midnight that I started packing up. Most of us were leaving about that time.

It's funny, but I was thinking about time-travel. I got up there about 6 p.m. and about a minute later it was midnight!! Hummmmm, there must be some sort of quantum mechanical, astronomical, highly scientific Keplarian, Newtonian law or theorum about this time travel thing -- especiallly when you are on a mountain-top with a telescope and a bunch of other folks with telescopes having a heck-of-a-time!!

Great evening, and I'm looking forward to the next one.