Swimming at Fiddletown

by Darrell Lee

It was great meeting you all last night. I didn't have as many problems with dewing as most people (judging from the hair dryers I heard going) at Fiddletown. I ran telrad and eyepiece dew heaters, but only had to blow dry my secondary two or three times all night. Shneor had a lot more dewing problems with his open secondary cage.

We three Benicia astronomers (Dennis, me, and Renato del Rosario) were the only people there besides Shneor by 3 a.m. Must be something in our Lake Berryessa water. I mentioned Benicia is known as a drug haven, and Shneor was offended that we didn't offer him any ;-) Since we have to drive so far, we want to get our money's worth.

Other than my view of Omega Centauri through Shneor's binoculars, I was most impressed last night with a view of the 9 galaxies visible in a single field of view between M84 and NGC 4435. My previous view of this field from my light-polluted back yard got only the four brightest and largest. I traced the chain another 7 galaxies before getting distracted with other things.

Posted on tac-sac Mar 06, 2005 19:27:19 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 10:02:41 PT