another OR FP, short

by Jamie Dillon

At the Peak last night we all had our scopes set up, only they got reduced use on account of being pushed around by the wind. I kept my paper charts closed. It was gusting up to about 25 knots thru most of the night, trees were moving pretty good.

I got to see Comet Tempel of the Impending Impact. It was dim at 57x in my 11". And got one new galaxy that just happened to be sitting in the same field, ngc 4845, a pretty edge-on with sharp ends and some mottling. Got to see the same galaxy in Joe Bob's Albert Highe model, cranked up to show all kinds of interesting detail. Nice one.

Also got to see Asteroid Irene, also thru Joe Bob's good graces, just before we finally packed up around midnight. Yes, it was Irene Goodnight.

As Alan Zaza mentioned on TAC, there were us 4 TAC regulars there (the aforementioned Jardine, plus throw in Peter Natscher), plus two guys from Santa Cruz with their SCT, and a couple with a horrendously huge 20" Obsession. The transparency wasn't bad - Jardine and I did a star count in the Finnish Bootie and came up with 16, which means a limiting magnitude of right around 5.9. Sky was esp pretty to the East. After breaking down, sat down and scanned Sagittarius, Scutum and Scorpius in the binocs. As with Alan, that for me was the most fun part visually. M22 kept standing out and demanding attention, serious adult globular.

This has been like bargaining with the devil, where you better be careful how you phrase the wishes. We had a decent sky, no dew, some fog over the towns. Glad to hear folks at Plettstone and IHOP and Coyote had all-around good conditions. Interesting that up in TAC-SAC country at Blue Canyon, Mars reported a helicopter landing, much like at Montebello. Cosmic!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 05, 2005 18:51:37 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 24, 2005 17:05:24 PT