Triple shadow transit from Houge

by Rich Neuschaefer

A little after sundown I could see Mercury with 8x42 binoculars. We also looked at in the 80mm refractor and my 6" refractor. Mercury was much like the first quarter moon, the same for Venus. Mars was very small. I think I could make out a polar ice cap. Saturn was beautiful as always. The Cassini division was easy to see. There was a nice amber zone on the planet. Our Moon was also looking good.

Thanks to Mike Koop for inviting us to Houge for a Saturday star party. The seeing was very good up until about midnight and then it was still enough to see the shadows and one of the darker moons transit. Mike very kindly turned out the lights and hung around with us until very late to turn them on again.

We put car floor mats over the sprinklers. They did quite well at keeping the water away from the scopes.

I was using my AP 155mm f/7 APO refractor. There was also an 8" f/6 Dob, a 10" f/5 Dob, the 80mm short tube refractor, and a TV Genesis f/5.

Jupiter was showing festoons between the NEB and SEB. There was also interesting detail in the NEB and SEB. When the dark moon came on to the planet it looked like a less dark, almost fuzzy, spot. We waited until it started to move off the planets disc before we took our scopes down.

It was a really interesting night.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sun Mar 28 02:56:55 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Fri Jul 9 23:11:18 2004 PT