FP Mars 2005

by Jeff Crilly

Arrived at about 5pm.. Other than the FPOA staffers, pads were deserted. Setup in front of the observatory. It felt cold. Damp too. Had the 15" and 4" refractor. Did I mention it was damp? Humidity went from about 80% to 95%. The refractor seemed dry for some reason. The dob was soaked. No fog, and coupled with the so-so transparancy we had sort of a bright sky from salinas.

Lots of shooters - and a couple exploding bolides.

A few hearty souls came from various parts: SF, Salinas, etc, to see mars from someplace less busy than the popular close in places such as chabot. Less busy it was indeed -- by midnight it was down to about 5 of us up there.

As we waited for mars to get high, we looked at numerous under-12-mag galaxies rising in the Triangulum, Aries, Pisces, and and cetus area of the sky. The sky was kinda bright for serious deepsky work, so we kept it light and added in some favorites like the OIII filtered veil for fun.

Btw, the CSC was spot on - clear, with fair transparency. Maybe "good" but not excellent.

Hints of stephans quintet were visible in the 15; the 30 showed obvious evidence of some clumping.

Brighter stuff was also very good: The 30 had a nice view of M1 later in the evening. The public folk enjoyed M27 and M15 in the 15".

Seeing was pretty good, but not excellent. Trapezium E & F stars were there most of the time - no G star in either the 15 or the 30. But the seeing was in and out.

The 30 had some nice hints of the horsehead. It was pretty tough, though. Tougher than when I saw it in someone's 18 at LSA a month ago.

Mars was pretty good in the 15 dob and 4" refractor. Again, seeing was in and out, but when it was "in" the 15 seemed to do pretty good, if a tad bright. (Time for an off-axis mask.) And Not as good as last week's views in the 10" mak, thats for sure.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 30, 2005 14:59:17 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 15, 2006 19:42:06 PT