by Bob Jardine
Wonder how the frozen two did up at Coe. How about a report?
I was going to title this report "Wusses choose unwisely", but I finally had to resist that, because it sounds like you all had big fun in spite of wussing out. I'm glad for that.
David and I had Coe to ourselves, as expected. Conditions were PDG.
Temps stayed mostly in the upper 30s, dipped down to near 30 once, but then rebounded to near 40 by moonrise, according to my $10 weather station. Humidity bounced around between 40% to 60%. No wind. Calm all night. So it really didn't seem very cold at all.
Sky was very clear in all directions; transparency was good. I got a lim mag count (using the Taurus triangle at about 11:00) of 5.9, which is pretty good, considering I'm usually a few tenths less than many sharper-eyed folks. There was some grunge (smog?) down in Morgan hill, but not much fog, so little extinction of the light pollution. Seeing was pretty good, mostly, but not excellent.
I did Herschel-2 objects in Auriga, a bunch of misc. poking around in Orion, checked out the comet, one Asteroid (532 Herculina), and finished up with Saturn. Using 12.5" f/5 Portaball.
David showed me a great view of NGC 1999 in his scope. I had logged it before, but I don't think I really appreciated it. A nice little roundish nebula surrounding a star, with some sort of dark smudge embedded, like a small dark nebula in the foreground. Something like an L shape or check-mark.
I also examined Cr 72 (see S.J.O'M's article in Jan S&T). Nice cluster with three Struve dbls in it (one of which is Iota Ori) and involved with NGC 1980.
I saw about 1/2 dozen shooters, mostly looking like they came from the neighborhood of Orion. At first I was befuddled, thinking they were a week early for the Orionid peak, but this morning I checked, and it is the Geminid peak that is coming up on Dec. 13/14. The Orionids were back in October. But, sure enough, there is another, typically smaller shower, the "Chi Orionids", with a broad peak from late November to mid December. I guess that must be what they were.
Other than being short, due to traffic on the front end and the great obliterator on the other end, it was a very fine night.
Happy weekend, everyone!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 04, 2004 10:30:14 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 22, 2005 11:24:41 PT