by Bob Czerwinski
| Observer | Bob Czerwinski |
|---|---|
| Date | May 28, 2004 |
| Observing Time | 8:30pm to 12:30am PDT May 28-29 (UT -7, or 0330-0730 29 May 2004 UT) |
| Location | Hogue Park, San Jose, California |
| Moon | Waxing gibbous - Phase ~70%; Crossing the meridian at the start of the session |
| Equipment | 12.5" f/5.0 Newt/Dob e/w Telrad and Paracorr (eff. f/5.75) |
| Eyepieces | 22mm-83x, 17mm-107x and 12mm-152x TV T4 Nagler (magnifications include Paracorr) |
| Filters | None in use |
| Sky Conditions | Just what you'd expect from Hogue with a 70% Moon! |
| Dimmest "nekked-eye" star identified | mag. 3.3. Average seeing 3/5 (and sometimes much better) |
| Temp/R.H. | Not recorded |
With the marine layer initially threatening to move on in, and a light westerly breeze blowing, the very early evening started out with pre-sunset views of the Moon. A few kids, about 8~12-years of age, commented on the "waves like heat from my Mom's oven" seeing effect, not unexpected. Still, as the sky darkened, the Moon continued to settle down, offering very pleasing views for the rest of the evening. Kids and adults really enjoyed themselves, especially when examining La Luna's heavily-cratered southern regions.
I sighted Venus about 8:30pm, catching sporadic views at 107x through the Hogue tennis court's chain-link fence, watching our Sister Planet as she dropped through tree branches and cloud layers. Talk about an amazing kaleidoscope of color! The *very* thin crescent (phase <4%) shimmered and sparkled in colorful fashion, absolutely beautiful to behold. Sitting just over 15-degrees from the sun, I lost sight of Venus at 8:45pm, trees and fog blocking Venus for a final time this particular evening. Tonight (Saturday, May 29th) Venus will just be a hair over 14-degrees from the sun, so catch her while you still can. This is a sight not to be missed!
Note: Just after losing Venus to the trees and fog, I attempted to catch Comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR), but a cloud band to the WSW eliminated that possibility. Perhaps another observer may have caught Comet LINEAR just a bit later.
Jupiter, with its NEB and SEB quite distinctive, put on quite a show for our guests, with Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all beautifully lined up to the east of Jupiter, seemingly right in line with the NEB. There was also a coming and going dark-spot at the northern edge of the NEB, close to Jupiter's meridian, which I assumed to be a barge. (Anybody know for sure?) When I started showing off ol' Jove, Starry Night indicated that the GRS was just rotating out of view, but I couldn't distinguish it at all, not even with averted imagination. As the seeing continued to improve, we watched as Io moved toward Jupiter's disk, but we quickly lost the moon (at least in my 'scope) once it ingressed. The pre-contact movement of Io was very noticible, of course, which was great for our guests. About an hour and a half later, we were showing views of Io's shadow transit. When the seeing would momentarily hit a 4~5/5 position of clarity, a tremendous amount of planet detail would jump right out. One gent, catching Jupiter in one of *those* moments, shouted, "What was THAT?!" After describing what he'd seen, he'd clearly caught a fair amount of detail in Jupiter's northern latitudes .. and headed right back to the eyepiece!
Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) continues to show relatively well, but given the brightness of the Hogue skies, NEAT was a challenging object to spot with binos. The bright coma and distinctive nucleus were still very nice at 152x, but from the Hogue venue I couldn't lay claim to any substantial tail.
Comet C/2003 K4 (LINEAR), now in Lyra, about half-way between Vega and 3rd-magnitude Delta Cygni, was also observed late last night. Just an averted-vision object from Hogue, resembling a low surface-brightness galaxy, with no core/nucleus distinguishable.
A very enjoyable evening, and the marine layer (for once!) gave us a break. The early-evening breeze completely died, the fog held back, and we had relatively good seeing, decent enough to still split Castor (with a nice gap!) when it was only about 15-degrees above the western horizon. In addition to the items noted above, the eye-candy items I offered to the public included Polaris, Alcor & Mizar, Alberio, Castor, M3, M4, M5, M13, M92, M51 and M57.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 29, 2004 13:20:19 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 12, 2004 20:44:10 PT