Tuesday, February 10, 2004

by Peter McKone

I set up next to Dennis Steele. Dan Wright and a friend arrived later. Another group set up across the parking lot. I think I counted 5 telescopes altogether. Skies were completely clear, and there was no dew. A thin layer of frost formed on my car by 10 pm, even though my thermometer reported 42 degrees. The northern sky seemed darker than usual. I mentioned to someone that this was my first observation of ... Camelopardalis (the constellation) from the Montebello. Previously I hadn't been able to see the star pattern. Seeing was good enough, but not great. Saturn was sometimes very sharp, but we weren't able to split Alnitak in my 15" Dob, or in Dennis' NP102. My search for 2-star open clusters had to be put on hold. Later, we did see the dim companion of Adhara, the hind foot of CMa.

It was dark enough to see the mag 8 face-on spiral NGC 2403, and the mag 13 planetary nebula NGC 1501, both in Camelopardalis. I was not able to see the mag 11 galaxy NGC 1569. The Eskimo Nebula was quite nice.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Wed Feb 11 11:59:32 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Wed Feb 11 23:00:26 2004 PT