Fremont Peak Last Night, 5/11/05

by Peter Natscher

John Gleason and I were up at the Fremont Peak FPOA area last night. I did more of my H II observing and sketching with my Starmaster 20" Dob until 12:30am and packed up by 1:30am. John remained after I had left.

The seeing was a bit soft at 1.0 to1.5 arc-sec with a transparency of mag. 6.0 overhead in Virgo. Antares was easy split to the south but detail on Jupiter and Saturn was poorly seen. H II galaxies on my list in Virgo (mag. 12-14) and their surrounding field stars at the eyepiece were fairly sharp at 240X. Stellar cores and mottling was observable in some. Using higher powers above 200X improved the eyepiece view creating a darker fov and allowing more galactic details to appear. There was a grayness to the sky all night, not a very dark sky that kept me from getting good dark sky eye adaptation. Light from the surrounding cities and 3.5 day-old moon was filling the sky keeping us from seeing the Milky Way well. A so-so night for observing.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 12, 2005 10:23:10 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 20, 2005 12:29:53 PT