by Jeff Gortatowsky
Weather forecasts had me not even considering it
Odd... the San Deigo NOAA web site said specifically 'party cloudy'. And looking at the satellite loop I felt they could be 'wrong' about that as well. Truth is they and I were both right. :D The clouds did make it to Temecula (though only broken and scattered). That of course works to OCA's advantage as the normally bright west-southwest horizon was 'less bright'. :D
and now that it looks "not too bad" I am bummed because its almost 6pm, certainly too late to just head out there, oh well.
Then I won't tell you our near Palomar it was cold, with plenty of dew, and an absolutely great night. There were times, depending on where you were looking, seeing was rock steady. 166x in the 18 inch easily split Epsilon Lyrae's 4 components. Later I took the Trapezium up to 291x with 6 steady members. But conditions varied. Far example Saturn never got above the 'river' stage. :D
Around 9 to 10pm transparency was so good I could just glimpse M33's core area naked eye (just). IOW, if you were working overhead or nearly so, seeing and transparency were often excellent. However I found the if you were working not too much further south of -20 or -30 transparency went to heck at times. A few triplets in Eridanus and Cetus gave me 'fits' because of that. Probably because of the varying moisture content/haze in the air.
While conditions were variable, it -was- cloud free the entire night we were there.
I knocked off the very few H400 objects I needed that were well placed. MOst of what I need are early morning winter galaxies in URSA Major, or Springtime Virgo/Coma Galaxies. I -hate- not having a plan, but yesterday was sorta 'spur of the moment' so no observing plan was in sight... so I pick a list at random and roamed around some Hickson Compact Groups and some Galaxy Triplets. I tried and failed to see the B33 the horsehead (I've see it before). I did not have a decent chart for McNeils Nebula though I roamed around the M78 area hoping for inspiration. :D
OCA President B. Toy and I both felt it was a beautiful fall/winter night. There were 'all of' three club members on site. One person, who I did not know was even there until he left, was in one of the observatorys. President Toy was helping an Astronomy class up at the club observatory and then she did some astro-touring of her own. And of course, yours truely on my pad on Jupiter Ridge. After packing it in about midnight, BT and I chatted for a bit. As we did the milkyway stretched from washout Cgynus over L.A. to Puppis, my favorite part of the big milky. It seemed the sky was really clear. We left about the same time, around 1am. It was just as a the waning crescent obliterator rose.
If it had been a teeny-tiny bit drier/warmer I might have stayed another hour or so and waited for Saturn to climb out of the river. Maybe even used a few of Mr Wood's S&T articles about the moon on the moon. Still what I call 'A good night'.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 07, 2004 15:04:46 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 21, 2005 20:06:59 PT