by Casey Fukuda
Well, the last few evenings the trades have calmed down and the skies in the evenings have been mostly clear. Both Friday and Saturday night looked kind of iffy, but tonight, there appeard to be far more clear than clouds. At about 8:30PM Hawaii Standard Time (we have no daylight savings time here), I set up my Celestron NexStar 11GPS for the first time since moving here. From my driveway, both my neighbors left their porch lights on and there were 6 high pressure sodium street lamps within 150 yards of me. With all that, I was bound and determined to get an ancient photon fix.
| temperature | approx 74 degrees F |
|---|---|
| humidity | approx 85% |
| observing attire | shorts, thong slippers, tanktop |
| seeing | good (poor, ok, good, excellent) |
| transparency | good |
| Saturn | low on the horizon, swimming from the atmosphere and tube currents in my scope. It was nice to see the rings, even though the view was pretty soft. |
|---|---|
| Jupiter | almost directly over head, at low magnification, was very sharp and crisp. There were at least 4 equatorial bands showing and the moons were pretty symetrical, two on each side of the disk. On a return view later in the evening at high magnification an easily seen shadow transit was moving across the disk. |
| M81 & M82 | Surprisingly, very bright. All of the close street lamps had me concerned that I wouldn't be able to see galaxies very well. On the contrary, even with the street lights and headlights from cars driving by every few minutes, I was able to easily make out a few bright Messier galaxies. |
| M104 | The Sombrero was very nice. Easily observed the distinctive dark dust lane across it's middle. |
| M51 | With averted visions, I could almost imagine the spiral arms between the two galaxies. Maybe I'm thinking of Richard Crisp's recent magificient posts of the M51. |
| NGC 4565 | Appeared as nice as I had ever seen it, even under the best conditions, at MB. The central dust lane was easily seen. |
By now I'm beginning to realize that, even though there were several bright, high pressure sodium street lamps near me and my telescope, the skies are dark here. I had to cup my hands around my eyes while peering thru the eyepieces to keep the reflection of the street lamps off of the glass. Generally speaking though, there is not nearly the "candle power" rising to the night sky here than in the bay area. I even live in the largest township areas on the island. Wailuku and Kahului contain approximately 60 to 65% of all the residents that live on the island. And my eyes were not even close to being dark adapted. I can't wait to set up in a dark spot. The ultimate will be the top of Haleakala volcano, rising 10,000 feet above sea level and about an hour and 40 minute drive from my home.
| M3 & M13 | looked very bright. Not anything like the poor conditions when observing from my driveway in Redwood City. |
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After giving each object several minutes to coax out the best seeing for that moment, I was ready to call it an early night. Just before I started breaking down, I remembered Omega Centauri might be up and within my line of sight. As I slewed to NGC 5139, it appeared the eves of the house were going to obscure my view. The mount continued slewing past the last roof hip and voila, Omega Cen. WOW!
Back to the eyepiece case for the 35 panoptic. I think I calculated an approximate .85 degree fov using that eyepiece on my C11. Omega Centauri must have taken up 2/3 of the fov of the 35 pan. In a dark area, with dark adapted eyes, that object will be spectacular.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 10, 2004 12:07:24 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 16:26:56 PT