IHOP2 08/06/05

by Tony Franco

Bit the bullet and heading up to IHOP in the late afternoon. Made it in record time from my house 1hr 15mins. Driving up I could see the remants of the summer monsoon on the eastern horizon. Started having doubts about my choice of observing sites. Arrived just after sunset and was surprised to see two folks setup.. One was a nice family of 3 with what I think was either a Meade/Nexstar 3" goto along with Greg? from Winters with his Discovery 10"/homemade aluminum platform. I remembered Greg from Fiddletown back in April. Both I and Greg noticed the lack of TAC-SAC'ers in attendance on a new moon weekend. We were both shocked!!!(someone note their files ;-)...)

The stratus layer just ended at IHOP and covered most of the eastern horizon. But, lucky for us, it started to dissipate and retreat torwards the east just after twilight.

The sky was actually quite good early on. Light dome from SacMetroplex was very dominant towards the west. Transparency was good and slowly went downhill at about midnight. The wind kicked up about that time also.

I and Greg enjoyed showing views of eye-candy (Lagoon,Trifid,Swan,Whirlpool,M13,M5,M27,M57,etc.) early on to the family that was having issues with their goto. They left about 10pm.

Spent the night just cruising the Summer MilkyWay one last time on the 16". Referenced Sept'03 Observer's Log and just went from there.

I ended up bailing at 1am. Transparency had gotten alot worst.

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Posted on tac-sac Aug 07, 2005 15:27:48 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 07, 2006 17:48:32 PT