Witch at FP

by Peter Natscher

Thatšs a really nice shot, Phil‹along with all the party food you brought for us last night at Ranger Row. I didnšt know you could get this kind of a shot while watching your new (and very bright) tripod-mounted mini-TV that you used as a monitor for the Canon DSLR imaging. The monitoršs realtime image looked so faint.

It was so enjoyable at Ranger Row sitting outside in front of the tool shed eating our dinner in total darkness under the winter stars. What a treat! By 9pm, I realized that I was over suited for the expected cold and wet night that never came. I was actually getting hot with all the winter clothing on, that I reverted back to my short sleeves. For one night, it was summertime revisited with conditions of 62°F/35% RH. The transparency was so good with the low RH, I was easily spotting mag. 14 PKšs with my 20˛ Starmaster. These were the 10-20 arcsec-sized planetaries with some noticeable inner detail. Larger M76 at high power showed off an extended halo (about twice the size of the two familiar brighter lobes). This feature is something that I only have noticed on film/digital images.

I also used for the first time my newly acquired and Œunusedš Millenium Star Atlas (found on the AstroMart from a seller in Germany) to find my way around the sky. The atlasšes layout makes more sense to me that the layout of the Uranometria volumes that Išve been using since 1998. Millenium is easier to find objects in and has more printed stars (to mag. 11 that match my 8X50 finderšs fov) and a larger page size‹all pluses. I donšt know why I didnšt purchase it when it became available in 1998. I guess I though back then that it was too expensive, but I donšt think so now.

Wešll have to do this again, soon. Maybe the weather gods will give us favorable astro-weather during the winter months after our dismal rainy fall.

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 12, 2004 21:08:01 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 23, 2005 16:37:14 PT