by Marek Cichanski
I thought I'd take another shot at heading up, so I called in the permit on Sunday afternoon, posted my OI, and headed for the gym. Got home, made hot food and drink to take along, and headed up. Things looked pretty promising when I got up there. It was still hazy, but not quite foggy, and the sky overhead was quite clear. Some cirrus to the south, but essentially the whole sky was a nice deep blue.
I was going to fiddle with my never-ending ETX goto saga, but at the last minute I said 'to heck with it, I want to look through a good scope'. So, I put the Intes-Micro Alter M603 on my CG-5, and waited for the sky to darken. Venus looked quite good during twilight, showing a nice gibbous phase, and suggesting that the seeing might be quite good later in the night. Looked at Mars briefly, too, but didn't see a lot of markings. It's getting pretty small.
Kevin Schuerman showed up around civil twilight, and we were the only two observers the whole night. Kevin had his new homebuilt 10" Mak-Newt in the car. I had seen this scope the previous night, and was anxious to look through such a remarkable instrument. It did not disappoint.
I spent the evening working my way through the AL double star list. If it hadn't been so darn dewy, with so much time spent wielding the dew zapper gun, I think I might have cracked 20 of 'em. As it was, I did about 12 or 13. The neat part was that I was able to start at the very beginning of the list and work through it in order, since 0h RA was descending towards the western horizon. Here are my notes on the stars I saw: (They probably contain various blunders in estimating position angles.)
Eta Cas: Beautiful white and orange pair. 200deg. 65 Pisc: Evenly matched, white to yellow white color for both, 300/120 deg. Psi1 Pisc: Very nearly equal pair, 345deg, wide white. Zeta Pisc: 90deg, slightly yellowish white primary with white secondary. Gamma Aur: Bright blue-white pair, equal, N-S. Lambda Ari: Basically white, 55deg. Primary may be slightly yellowish. Alpha Ari: Tight, tought split in 9&5 mm Naglers. 270deg. Bright, bluish white. Gamma And: 120 deg, gorgeous yellow-blue pair. Primary is strongly yellow, secondary is distinctly bluish-white to blue. Iota Tri: 90deg, tight, yellow-white and white pair. (Secondary might be slightly blue, but this might just be an illusion.) Alpha UMi: Polaris, couldn't see it tonight because of poor polar alignment. Have seen it a gabillion times. Lambda Ceti: TOUGH! All I could see was a slight brightening of the diffraction rings on the south following side. Eta Per: Wide gold and "blue" pair, 250 deg. Struve 331: Moderately wide white pair, 90 deg. 32 Eridani: 180 deg, another gold and "blue" pair.
There were some very nice moments of seeing on Saturn, particularly through Kevin's scope. We could definitely see the assymetrical shadow being cast on the rings now that we are past opposition. Very sharp Cassini division, very plainly visible crepe ring. Possibly even a thin, slightly darker equatorial band in the middle of a broad, white-ish equatorial belt. Titan clearly not a point source. The big Mak-Newt was showing great contrast and detail. Apos, watch out...
The big scope showed the E and F stars in the Trapezium, but they remained basically out of reach for my 6" Mak-Cass. After a while I thought I might have barely detected them, but it involved a lot of averted imagination.
The biggest issue for us was dew. The breeze was cool and moist most of the night. 45 degrees and 98 percent humidity was the order of the day. Wow, did I wish that my Kendrick straps had arrived! I used my 12v hair dryer like crazy, on the corrector plate, the eyepiece, the finder, and even the red dot pointer. The amount of haze and moisture came and went, at one point getting fairly clear (but still dewy). Eventually, around 10:45, it socked in pretty good and we broke down. Our gear all looked like it had been rained on. As luck would have it, the sky cleared again around the time were driving out, and it was the best sky all night. The winter milky way hung high in the west. Leo, Hydra, and Jupiter were getting well up in the east. The Dipper was rising up nicely in the northeast. The clouds and fog had darkened the sky considerably. We were too dewed-out to set back up, though, so we headed down the hill.
All in all, it was a very worthwhile night. Five and half hours of observing during a cloudy January, lots of great double stars, some awesome views of Saturn through a beautiful, innovative instrument, and the simple fact of clear sky! Life is good!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Jan 19 01:18:39 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Sat Jan 24 21:45:59 2004 PT