Coyote 4/10 - Clouds, fog and fun

by Craig Colvin

I was setup at the other end of the parking lot from Rob and that apparently made my experience almost completely opposite from Rob's. Yeah there were some headlights but that happens at Coyote. The campers that came by my way were actually very polite, they had already seen all of the planets so I was showing galaxies, mainly M81/82, M51, the Leo triplet. They all seem geninuely interested and asked some good questions. There was one lady who spent most of the evening next door with Rashad and was really getting into it.

I counted 30 scopes there. It felt like a big star party, lots of scopes to see, eyepieces to swap. I found out that a 22mm Panoptic won't come into focus on my XT10 or 8" string scope, but a 22mm Nagler will (thanks Tom and Marek). Not exactly the outcome my wallet was hoping for.

There was a new guy there (Anders?) with his new XT10 he had picked up that day. Although I hate to blame the clouds on his new scope you know how fickle the cloud gods can be with new equipment. :) He seemed to be enjoying finding the bright M's that were visible between the clouds. As did I.

Rashad tried several times to see the supernova 2004bd in NGC 3786 and finally bagged it when there was finally a break in the clouds. Thanks Rashad for letting us all take a look.

Around 10:30 the northern section of the sky was quite clear and I actually was able to bag 4 H400s in UMa. I paused to chat with several people and within 2 minutes the lot the fog appeared covering the lot. Packed it up and was home by midnight.

So I didn't log many new items, but even with the clouds, the campers, and fog, I had a blast. Some nights I want to sit on the hilltop under clear skies checking off items on my observing list and other nights it's fun to just be outside with your friends. Coyote last night was definitely the latter.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 11, 2004 10:21:38 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 16:14:49 PT