Woodside Jan 12/13

by Michael Linnolt

Conditions similar to last night. Had a little bit of fog around 8PM, but it cleared up quickly. Sky was pretty good, with 6 trapezium components visible in the 8" even though the seeing would come in "waves" it would alternate between perfect and distorted, like a picket fence was being drawn across the sky.

Comet Q2 Machholz was not much different than last nite, I estimated it at V=4.0, so maybe a slight fading. In the 8" at 35x, the dust tail seemed more prominent than yesterday, now almost 1 degree in PA 140, and the ion tail I traced out at least 2 degrees in PA 70, but that one seemed less obvious than before.

I looked at Saturn, just about at its exact opposition time? Its supposed to "brighten up" at that position, and it did indeed seem more prominent, but Im not sure if its really visually measurable? Several satellites were visible and maybe a bit brighter than usual.

Ran through a fairly good list of CV for the AAVSO:

U GEM 14.3-14.6 still quiescent.
IR GEM <14.5
TY PSC <14.3
TW TRI 14.3, outburst
HL CMA 12.2, outburst
HM CMA 12.2
CN ORI <14.6
V1159 ORI <14.3
VZ PYX 13.7, outburst but fading.

Note: HL CMA is probably the easiest Cataclysmic variable to find, being just a few arcminutes from Sirius. The trick is to use very high power to get the blazing star out of the field, and make sure your scope is well "anti-reflected"!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Jan 13, 2005 10:20:26 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 27, 2005 21:02:49 PT