Coyote Lake Sat 18 Jan 2004

by Matthew Marcus

K. Teh had posted an OI for Coyote, and I figured I'd follow. I got there at about 1730, nobody was there and the sky was clear. Since I hadn't observed in quite a while, I decided to simply revisit old favorites and not try to log anything. This turned out to be a good plan because it clouded up by 2030 and I left after 3 hours. Anyway, the clouds encroached from the W, so I got to see the winter objects in the E. Of course, Saturn was high on the list, and I returned to it several times. The seeing was average, and I got a glimpse of the Encke feature. I got the impression that the E end of the outer ring was darker and bluer than the W end, but I suspect that this was just atmospheric dispersion, which went in that direction. I hit M42/43 (5 in the Trapezium for sure, possible 6), M78, the Flame, the Rosette, Hubble's Variable, the Eskimo, M35 and its distant friend, M76, the Double Cluster, M81/M82, M31/32/110 (before the clouds ate it), M36, M37, M38, 2174, the 37 cluster (2169?), M1, M79, Venus and probably others I forget.

I couldn't see I433 or the California, which I blamed on moisture and lack of transparency. On M42, I think I saw some reddish color in the outer regions when using an Hbeta filter. This filter has a red passband, so maybe there's enough Ha to be visible once you knock out the OIII. It occurred to me that Hubbles Variable should have been on Messier's list since it does look like a tiny, wedge-tailed comet.

Not bad for <3hrs of observing! It sure felt good to get out after ~2 months without, even though I spent longer driving than observing. Unfortunately, this will be the last for me for a little while as I won't be able to observe next weekend because I'm doing an experiment. Oh, well!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sun Jan 18 10:49:00 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sat Jan 24 21:37:42 2004 PT