by Jamie Dillon
Nice night, very refreshing. The Milky Way was wild and awesome, especially as it got overhead. Transparency measured out to 6.1 not long before moonset. Seeing was good, 4/5, all night. Light breeze at the SW lot and coats on, pleasant. Gleason was fighting a 20 knot wind meanwhile. By midnight it was calm.
I had a lot of fun watching Io move up and start to transit Jupiter. Got a fresh sense of the planet rotating with the moons orbiting in the same direction. Some dance. There was a big white oval in the NEB with a distince dark rim, at meridian around 2130.
Chased galaxies in Bootes. Several years ago, Wagner and Linebarger and I think Neuschafer made a project at Bumpass of finding galaxies in Bootes. And here Sue French in the June S&T highlighted 4 of them. I'd seen a total of 2, and there's one apparent cluster of 5 just east of Alkaid, eta UMa, in SkyAtlas. Spent a solid chunk of time getting starhopping chops back after 5 weeks, remembering which end is up.
The most interesting galaxy of the night was NGC 5676, which I'd seen a year ago, with a lot more detail and delight this time. Saw a rough triangular shape with its base to the North. Some flaring off the southern point. Stellar core to averted vision, and a transverse dark lane south of the core. Looked all disrupted.
On Kevin's prompt, I split nu Sco 4 ways for the first time. The brighter pair was tough but finally cooperated at 420x, 40% of the time. Having been off TAC for over a week, it was fun to catch up and see Mr Cz finishing the gargantuan project of the elusive and frustrating Herschel 2500, exciting to see Mr Highe's news from New Zealand and Shingletown, and fun to read Mr Turley's enthusiastic account of the weekend before on the very Peak. There's something very nourishing about a sky full of stars, isn't there?
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 22, 2004 21:37:45 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 01, 2005 17:48:27 PT