by Shneor Sherman
| Equipment | Sayre 22" monocular with Equatorial Platform 30mm Widescan II+visual paracorr 20mm Nagler 2X Powermate 9mm Adorama Ultraview Speers-Waler 5-8mm zoom DGM Optics NPB filter |
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There were a number of observers who turned out, including Jake Burkhard and his wife Mercedes, Gene Kahn, Ken Mason, Bill Porte, Stefan (?spelling) (and whose last name I did not catch) and four or five others who I had not previously met and whose names escape me at the moment.
Conditions started out ideally, with excellent trasparency and good seeing. Had another wonderful view of Hickson 68, with 5 galaxies visible in the field of my 9mm Ultraview. This is such a pretty sight, with a bright star in the field. Alco viewed the supernova in M51.
The comet watch began about 10:40. Tempel 1 is fairly dim and extended. A bit after 10:52, I noticed what appeared to be numerous and very dim small flashes near the core. I thought it might be my eyes, but my sighting was ocnfirmed shortly thereafter by Jake Burkhard. Shortly thereafter, the core appeared a bit brighter than it had, and a stellar point became visible and persisted in the core.
I spent quite a bit of time on nebulae afterward - the Bug, the Little Gem, some bright Messiers in Sagittarius, M57 at about 480x (the central star vas intermittently visible), the Veil, the Crescent, the Saturn nebula, the Helix, NGC7331 and Hickson 92 (Stephan's Quintet) and sundry other objects including several globulars.
I packed it in around 3:10 a.m.
Posted on tac-sac Jul 04, 2005 14:31:10 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 26, 2005 20:43:59 PT