Fremont Peak OR

by Peter Natscher

Observing until midnight last night up at the SW parking lot was certainly enjoyable. I arrived by 6pm and set up my 10˛ Mak-Cass during a very colorful sunset over the Pacific. At 7pm, John Gleason rolled in with his black Hummer looking forward for an imaging event.

By 9pm I was binoviewing the 3-day old moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter @ 400X in somewhat breezy conditions. The juxtaposition of all these solar system bodies right in line along the ecliptic and next to each other last was very picturesque.

The seeing was remarkably sharp throughout the breezy period until it calmed down by 10pm. Planetary detail was very good on Jupiter with many whit ovals following the GRS at mid-disk.

I spent an hour enjoying a few remote mag. 10 globulars (class I and V) in Coma Berenices. They are really way out there at our galaxyšs edge mingled among springtimešs galaxy fields and required 250X to see well. The class Išs are without any core and appear like a galaxy themselves.

I was able to split doubles as tight as 0.5 arc-sec and tries alpha Coma B. at 0.4 arc-sec. It didnšt split but was a clean oblong airy disk shape with nice diffraction all around. The seeing was so transparent (and a low RH) that the thin crescent 3-day old moon still had a major effect on the sky darkness until it set at around 11pm.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 23, 2004 15:52:20 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 19:18:48 PT