by Jeff Gortatowsky
I went out to OCA's Anza site 15 miles northeast of Palomar Mountain and observed from dusk to about 10:30pm. As far as I know I was the only observer there. Everyone else was 'imaging' (yawn). I had my trusty Swayze equipped 45cm f/4.5 Litebox dob sporting it's new primary coating, a gift from the SSP raffle. So far I remain very pleased with the work done by L&L Optical Coatings here in Orange County. I would recommend them. And their normal prices seem quite 'reasonable'. Of course you can not get more reasonable than free! :)
BTW: Assuming Barry Packham still makes em, the Litebox is one of the easiest Dobs to transport as the heaviest piece is the mirror at 44lbs. But it is in an easy to transpart removable cell. That said, were I to buy today, I'd let Michelle build me one as, well, she is an awesome scope maker and a friend. Nothing at all wrong with the Litebox, just well, Michelle and Alberts designs are a work of art.
The night started cool, clear, and calm with a gorgeous crescent moon hanging 20 degrees lower then Venus. Just picture perfect. BTW: I spotted Venus in the daylight while the Sun was still well above the horizon. 16:33 local time IIRC. Not even really hard. I just blocked the sun with my hand. Used Venus to align the finder. Later in the evening Venus would easily cast a noticable shadow.
Here's a first. I set up the 45cm Litebox and needed only to tweak the Auto-Collimator. That's never happen before! Those of you that 'spot' your mirror with a white paper disc and use an auto-collimator know what I mean. Starmaster owners mostly, as it was Rick Singmaster who taught me the procedure on the phone the first time I set up my 28cm EL.
Seeing at the start of the evening was good. As I waited for twilight / astronomical twilight to end, I did a few creampuffs from the AL Double Star list. eta Cas, sigma Cas, and xi Cep. As the wind picked up later on, so too seeing degraded to the point that by the time the trapezium in Orion was high enough to judge seeing, the seeing had gone to heck with the A through D components looking like little snowballs.
Early on I paused to ruin my night vision and look at Mars. With decent seeing early on Mars was sporting that large arrowhead shaped feature pointing west. Very similar to late nights at SSP 2 months ago.
I continued with the few late year objects still available from Steve Gottlieb's SSP 2004 challenge list. First and the best of the evening was Jones 1 in Pegasus. Wow! That is a huge, gorgeous, PNeb - and not hard at all with the OIII. Then on to NGC7318-1 and 2 and all of Stephen's Quintet. Then 7320A, B, and C (all nearby the Quintet). With those done, and quick look at 7333, I continued his list with IC10, IC166, Abell 2, and IC59 / IC63 in Cassiopeia. I sprinkled in a nearby Berkley open cluster.
During the last two hours of the observing run the wind made it difficult to say the least. It started blowin' a few hours after dusk and was moving the scope around by 10pm even with the shroud off.
Wind and cold... I can take the cold no problem. And it was dry all evening. No dew which is wonderful! I had layers of loose clothes on, a scarf, a hood, and chem heat packs. I was fine. I've done this many many times. Indeed I love Winter observing as I can observe 6 hours and be home by 2am! LOL! But the wind came up and that made it frustrating to starhop and it ruined the seeing. It is at that point one decides, "Ok. If I am going to endure the cold, at least I ought not have to fight the scope AND the seeing." So that's when I decided to not stay anouther 2 hours and packed it in about 10:30. All in all, much better than a good day at work. :)
Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 04, 2005 11:54:12 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 16, 2006 22:09:00 PT