Coyote Lake, Mar 05

by Wei Cheng

I'm one of those brave TACos you mentioned below. The finderscope became fogged just after I aligned it. Through the finderscope, each star brighter than mag 4 looks like comet and one dimmer than mag 4 can't be detected at all. But image in eyepiece was good. I did my Marathon warmup, for the first 33 objects, I missed only 3 (M74,M32,M110), not bad. The secret behind my XT10 was I armed it with homemade alt/az setting circle (<$10), a palm gave me an objects's alt/az. Without the setting circle, my Marathon warmup would have become Marathon cooldown.

At about 11:00pm, light cloud covered about 50% sky, and I left with satisfaction.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Mar 07, 2005 18:00:57 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 09:18:56 PT