by Randy Muller
How was Fiddletown?
It was pretty good. The transparency was reasonably good except when cirrus clouds were present. Fortunately the bonfire built by the neighbor was out before it got astronomically dark.
The seeing was a bit softer than I would have liked, and was a little surprising to me, given the presence of some cirrus clouds, which in my experience often mean excellent seeing. The clouds were intermittent, and most of the sky was clear all night long.
There were 10 scope setups and 12 people total.
Most of the Sacramento-area gang (Jane Smith, Jim Ster, Marsha Robinson) left around 1:30am, with the Bay Area gang (Mark Wagner, Mary Farris, Richard Navarrete, Jim Webster, Ivan, Charlie Stifflemeier, Ray Cash and Nick turning in about an hour later.
I rolled out at 2:45.
We had a jolly time.
I had some excellent views of comet 2001 Q4 NEAT.
We watched the nucleus (more accurately, "pseudonucleus") of the comet occult a star.
I believe the mag 11 star was TYC 1398-1652-1 and I believe it was occulted around 9:03pm, but the time is a somewhat gross estimate. According to my notes it could probably be off by 10 minutes in either direction.
The occultation was spectacular -- we watched it happen in slow motion. At first it looked like the stellar nucleus of the comet was going to come close to the star. Then it looked like it was going to come really close. I was stunned when it merged completely. For perhaps 30 seconds or so the star was invisible. Then it reappeared on the other side, and the comet moved away from it.
Posted on tac-sac May 17, 2004 07:37:39 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 19:32:34 PT