by Carter Scholz
The only other observer was Albert Highe, first-lighting a beautiful new 13.5" (weight 46 pounds). Albert gave me my first look at the Horsehead, just visible at about 60x through a H-beta filter.
At dusk the sky was unpromising; after a drive full of sun, just the last 10 miles were socked in by local cloud. This went away at dark, though it remained quite damp, and the seeing was mediocre at best, with 4 Trap stars and the Cassini division barely showing. It dried up a little as the evening progressed, but around midnight as I had a galaxy in the field and was checking it against the chart, when I went back to the eyepiece the stars were there, but the galaxy was gone! I looked up and saw a halo around Jupiter and I couldn't see Mizar. ZLM had dropped to about 4.0 in about a minute. That was my cue to hit the hay. Woke at 0300 with the summer Milky Way rising and the sky gorgeous, ZLM back to about 6.0, seeing still poor (no belts on Jupiter), so nailed a few more galaxies in UMa, played around in Virgo for a little while, had a little early Sag eye-candy, then back to bed.
Looks like the next two evenings will be even better. Wish I could have stayed.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mar 11, 2005 13:07:04 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 10:48:59 PT