Sat night viewing in the valley

by Ralph Aguirre

The Clear sky clock in Elk Grove was off by about 3 hrs last night in its predictions of clear skies. I was set up in my back yard hoping for the best, listening to the Kings game. (We lost) I had my scope out since 1pm, hoping the tube currents would settle and it would be equalized to the night by darkness. The clouds were thin enough that I could make out the brightest objects like Saturn, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Castor and Pollux, Sirius, even M42. Saturn came through nicely despite the cloud cover. It was fairly crisp with ring and surface details, even through some thin clouds. Its as if the clouds were acting as a filter but passing enough light to let the planet come through.

We viewed everything we could see. Even the Trapeziums E star was coming through. Despite the thin clouds Splitting Rigel in Orion was new to me. The tiny secondary star of that binary system came through nicely.

Finally around 11:30 pm, the sky began to open up. It was hit and miss till about 12:30, when finally the sky got dark and the night became clear as ever. I packed almost everything up to go inside twice, but left the scope out just incase.

Saturn was magnificent! At 325x, 4 rings within the ring structure were clearly seen, the A, B, C and Cassini division. For a short while, there was a glow around the planet due to some extreme upper haze that eventually dispersed. At this point I plugged the electronics back in my scope, which I was using in a manual mode, to activate the tracking, which I took down earlier.

With the haze around the planet gone and my tracking working again, I increased the magnification to 435x. The Keeler (Encke) gap came out at this higher power, making the planet look like a satellite fly by image. The seeing was excellent, despite what the clear sky clock was predicting. A squirrel must have been sitting on one of the sensors giving us poor predictions on the conditions, here in Elk Grove.

After this, I swung my scope over to the Leo triplets, which were high in the western sky. I could tell the seeing and transparency were excellent because not only did M65 and M66 come through nicely, but NGC 3628 came through, which is the third galaxy of the Leo triplets. Usually this is a struggle to see, but the skies seemed usually black for the city viewing, and NGC 3628 came through, all three viewable in the same field of view.

The Sombrero Galaxy M104 was close by and also was putting on a nice show. The dust lanes of the brim of the sombrero were easy to see at 200x. Even Jupiter was putting on a nice show early this morning. The surface bands showed plenty of contrass, but there was no sign of the GRS, which must have been on the backside of the planet.

Finally the Owl Nebula was easy to spot, the round shape of the head easy to see, but no sign of the eyes were viewable, even with a UHC or OIII filter.

Even though I had a propane heater going, it wasn't a cold night, and there was no dew, so after the clouds dispersed, it was actually a pretty nice moonless night for viewing. Much better than being inside watching TV.

Posted on tac-sac Feb 06, 2005 22:16:01 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 06, 2005 22:23:42 PT