by Marek Cichanski
Dan, Mike, Harry, and I all set up at Montebello last night, and conditions were at least decent the whole night. As has been the case many times this year, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of wind when I arrived. Lately it seems like I'll leave Silicon Valley in a fairly strong wind, and it will be gone, or nearly gone, when I get to Montebello. The breeze came and went during the night, and sometimes it was chilly and moist, suggesting that the marine layer was trying to push across the crest of the ridge. Fortunately, it didn't really succeed. Sometime around midnight we saw some fog come through the notch to the south, and we thought we were going to get hosed, but it stayed clear. Yay! Seeing wasn't especially great, though, but at one point Dan had a very nice view of Jupiter through his LX200 and Denkmeier binoviewer.
I don't have my log sheets with me right now, so I don't have the NGC numbers of the objects that I logged, but I probably logged about 10 or 12 NGC galaxies in Virgo. I suspect that some of them were H400 galaxies, and some might have been H400-2. The main thing that struck me last night was how many nice pairs and trios of galaxies I saw. Seeing multiple galaxies in the eyepiece field is something that I still can't get over. I found myself muttering 'whoa' and 'geez' a lot.
Naturally, there was eye candy, too. Any time that I get out on the 'one good night for a while' and see M3, M4, M5, and M13, I'm going to chalk that night up in the 'win' column. Cool beans. There were also the usual eye candy galaxies - 95/96/105, 65/66, Markarian's Chain, 51, etc... I looked at 59 and 60 for the first time since the Messier Marathon, and boy were they nice. Plus there's that third NGC galaxy off to the side, making for yet another nice eye candy triplet. Gosh, galaxy season is fun - too bad we haven't had better weather for it the last couple of years.
Dan Wright was busy tracking satellites, as usual, and that was a lot of fun. He and I hunted down GOES-10, which I was really psyched about. I have come to rely on the GOES-10 IR loop as my main source of weather info for observing. It was neat to actually see the satellite that was looking back at me. Now, if we had wireless internet at MB, and I could look at the IR loop and then turn to the eyepiece and look at GOES-10, well, that would just be the cat's meow.
Dan and Harry left sometime between midnight and 1, and I closed the place up at 2, as usual. I'm beginning to feel like a bartender. Now I've got that pleasant tired/satisfied feeling that comes from having gotten in the 'one good night' at good 'ol MB. Life is good.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 03, 2005 11:01:40 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 20, 2005 11:50:45 PT