by David Staples
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 08 Feb 04 |
| Time | 1900-1935, 2100-2230 PDT |
| Location | Santa Rosa, 38°44'N 122°W Elev. ~110 |
| Weather | Clear, cold, no wind |
| Equipment | C8, 26mm Plossl, 12mm Intes wa, |
| Seeing | 7/10 deteriorating to 5/10 |
| Trans | 9/10 |
A bit of a ramble follows but I was excited.
If anyone wants to renew their enthusiasm for observing, all it will take is one short observing session with my daughter Isabel.
Isabel has been pestering me (much to my hearts delight) for the past couple months to look through my scope (telwescowpe in 4 year oldese). Every night since Venus has become visible in the evening again she will point it out unerringly and proclaim "there's Venus the Planet". Well last night everything finally...finally fell into place to give Izzy, her wish.
About 5 o'clock we set the scope up out back to a non stop barrage of questions, (she's a chip off the old block), and then set out for dinner. After dinner and back home we bundled up and stepped out on the patio around 7:00pm, the first target was of course Venus. I asked her what she saw and she said it looked like a broken moon (her term for a less than full moon).
Next up was Saturn, described as "round with edges", this got her really excited, she started pointing out all of the brightest stars wanting to look at all of them. Betelgeuse, Sirius, Rigel, Mars (looking definitely gibbous) and Aldebaran quickly came and went. We stopped at M42 as well which, for me at least, will henceforth be known as the "Mickey Mouse" nebula (if I try to look with a childs mindset, it does look a bit like Mickey).
We bounced back and forth after that between Mickey Mouse and the edges planet. All of this happening within about 35 minutes, the extent of my 4 year olds attention span in the cold and dark. Hopefully when first quarter moon rolls around we will have some clear skies, she really wants to look at the moon.
The early evening was looking quite good for seeing but it didn't hold up. After I got Izzy down to bed and went back out, Saturn was boiling away at 169x. I spent a bit more time getting my first watery look at Jupiter of the season before packing it in rejoicing at having created a new observing partner.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Feb 9 11:09:05 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Mon Feb 9 20:10:03 2004 PT