by Jamie Dillon
In the SW lot, just for people I know by name, there were David and Nathaniel, Nathaniel with a new Orion 10" of his very own. Mike (Harrington?) the imager was next to me; then there were Peter N, Jeff Crilly, Duval with his new Hardin Dobs, Joe Bob hissef, Craig Colvin, the Shadow, and Rich I Kid You Not Neuschafer. Bunch of other people as well. Kingsley was king of the hill over at the Observatory. I didn't know Crisp was over there!
Like Mark W, though far away, I spent a chunk of the night at the binocs watching the comet. All week, I'd been looking at it in the binocs from home. Each time I had seen the tail right off the coma fanning out to a wide angle of some 60°. Yes, in the scope as well as the binocs in a dark sky, there was that broad fanning-out. This was in Orion 7x50's on a tripod.
Had fun comparing 4 planets. Venus is very beautiful now as a sharp crescent. I'd seen Jupiter with the 2 big brown barges in the NEB, but sure enough Jardine had the right magnification to bring out that interesting very long white oval on the south edge of the NEB.
Telescope work was done with Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians. While panning for galaxies with a field of a couple of degrees, the 16 Koenig made a fine scanning eyepiece.
Did some deepsky gazing, you can be sure. There is a stretch of the Virgo cluster heading north from M100 that I hadn't explored yet. Along a pretty chain of stars just north and east of M100 is a set of 7 galaxies. From a close pair, 4340 and 4350, they run SE to 4419, which was the galaxy I'd focused on in the chart. Turned out to be not only the "one we were looking for tonight. Prettiest of the lot, bright slim spindle with moderately bright core. PA ca 135°. Yesss."
(The yesss was because a couple other position angles I'd measured were nowhere near those in the NGC lists. Lists are probably off, right? Charted PA for 4419 is 133°.)
While visiting with Kingsley, he ran down Terzan 3, one of the crueler globular clusters in the galaxy, dim, worn out and obscured by dust. Something for everyone. Never thought I'd look at a globular in the eyepiece with a measurable suck factor. Hafta get as far as the Terzans for this to kick in.
The night in general had a negligible suck factor. Not cold, dry, dark enough with OK seeing, as Joe Bob documented. Limiting magnitude 5.8, seeing 4/5, good. Very good company. I stuck around too late, from gazing at the summer Milky Way hoisting up, and got to see a thin waning Moon just pre-dawn over our street. Really have to get my observing stamina chops back.
Thanks for listening.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 18, 2004 23:42:52 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 19:36:25 PT