by Sean McCauliff
Wags went -So, how were things at the Peak and other sites?Cool that New Moon was fun all over the region. Conditions were highly acceptable at Coulter. The dew never really got to my optics, but sure made the charts wet. Water's strange stuff. Limiting magnitude for me was 5.7 at best (13 stars in the Finnish Bootie). Seeing was moderate 3/5, which can pass as a euphemism for mediocre. Plenty of missing details in familiar objects. In all, though, much better observing than in town.
Saw an Albert Highe design scope in the SW lot, a Plettstone product, with its people gone for the moment. And along with enjoying Peter's company and catching up with Marek, got to meet Gator Chaser, the man who came with his own nickname. He's really chased gators. Exotic.
I was up in the SW lot with my girlfriend Heather. It's likely we where having some KFC or trying to stay warm in the car while you stopped by. Sorry to have missed you guys. When not in car we looked at Saturn, Jupiter and some galaxies near the big bear. This is the first time I tried 400x with them on the new scope (yes, it's one of Michelle/Albert's scopes). I had not bought the telescope with planetary viewing in mind, but I'm really amazed at how much better it is than my 10" Meade. I thought I could see color on Saturn and that the C ring was visible at times, Heather concurred. I thought I could see some swirl structure in the GRS on Jupiter. The cloud belts showed detail. Also viewed were M51, M63, M106, M101 ,M94, NGC 4490, NGC 5005, NGC 5033 and some other NGCs in that area. While I was trying to figure out which star was Beta-Com I found M3. Eventually I found one of my favorites NGC4565 and some other galaxies on the way. M13 was the last object viewed, which looked like a tightly packed ball of marbles at 400x. It was cold at 1am and so we packed it in. It was a good night.
I'm still adjusting to the lack of goto. Using paper charts has been a problem for me. I find it easer to use a chart with only nakked eye visible stars and then just moving the red dot to the area that I think it should be in.
Seeing was OK. There was a cold light breeze at times which blew some papers off my tables, but was otherwise benign. As with Jamie, there was dew on the charts, but it never condensed on the optics.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 11, 2005 16:19:59 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Apr 11, 2005 20:35:24 PT