Fiddletown was damn good!

by Jim Ster

Shneor, Keith and I had a great time at Fiddletown this evening. The skies were a bit better than was predicted by the CSC's. You guys missed out on a good one. I was pushing 700x on a few occasions and one jaunt at 900x yielded good results. Transparency was 7-8 and the seeing was about the same. Mag 6 stars were easily seen. Around 10:30 it softened up a bit and we lost some seeing, but it was still good.

Anyway, tonight's eye candy included:

Thor's Helmet, M42 (6 decent stars in the trap), Hickson's 51, 57, 58 & my favorite one so far, Hickson 61 (way cool). M51 & 52, Markarian's (sp?) Chain, the Leo Triplet, the Peanut Nebula with it's central star, M78 along with McNeil's Nebula (thanks Shneor), the Sombrero, the Double Quasar, M81 &82, M76 with it's cool nebula, M77 (yawn). Venus was riding high in the west and the best I've ever seen it. Midway through the evening Saturn had Cassini's division and some salmon colored banding on the surface visible as well as some great shadows. Later, Jupiter had some bands, but nothing too dramatic.

BTW, it was a good thing I was using my little 22" last night. As low as my photon absorption rate has been as of late, the 30" might have caused an overdose. ;)

Ps- Maybe Shingletown on Saturday if the weather cooperates?

Posted on tac-sac Fri Feb 13 02:39:56 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Mon Feb 16 17:29:43 2004 PT