by Michael Portuesi
Lake Sonoma had serious dew. But it wasn't a complete bust. Skies were clear. Temperature was cool, but not unpleasant. Seeing was mediocre. I managed to fight off the dew for a couple of hours and saw a few nice things. I packed up at around 10:00.
Lake Sonoma was wind-free, which was another plus. But the dew really was too much. My partner's Deep Map 600 was dripping by the time we packed up.
I was able to cope with dew for a while by sticking tissue paper over my finderscope objective. But when the eyepieces started dewing over, and I had to juggle eyepieces while warming them with my hands, it just became too much work to continue.
I was continuing my tour of the most excellent TAC Eye Candy list, following finder charts I printed from SkyTools.
I managed to pick off NGC 6802, NGC 7009 (Saturn Nebula), NGC 7331 and the neighboring Stephan's Quintet, NGC 7217 and NGC 7209 before conditions went south. I studied the Quintet for about a half hour to resolve all of the component galaxies in my 15-inch reflector, before making a sketch.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 07, 2004 12:15:02 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 21, 2005 20:00:06 PT