by Rob Hawley
Driving up to Coe the sky looked really good. Temps were in the mid 40s and the humidity low. There was a gusty wind.
Sander and Andrew joined me as it was getting dark. The sky was disappointing. Despite the apparently clear skies at sunset the transparency was not really good and the light domes were far worse then I remembered. The seeing was horrible.
I wanted to do some more tests on the travel scope so most of what I started looking at was fairly low.
| Object | Mag | Obs Aids | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| NGC 1333 | 91x | dimly visible maybe some structure look again in darker site | |
| NGC 1528 | 91x | ||
| NGC 772 | 91x | ||
| M 76 | 91x | nice rectangular shape | |
| NGC 253 | 127x | some structure visible | |
| NGC 288 | 127x | some individual stars, but the seeing fuzzed it up | |
| NGC 246 | 91x | o3 | not quite round not ring lots of small stars visible |
| NGC 247 | 91x | dim poor seeing | |
| NGC 7314 | 91x | serious averted vision although seeing was bad and in city lights definite edge on shape jiggle helps |
In addition I looked at some eye candy
| M31,etal | nice view almost directly overhead |
|---|---|
| M33, NGC 604 | good view of spiral structure near zenith |
| M1 | low. Wind kept catching my scope |
The cold was manageable, but the wind was not. I had a lot of trouble looking at anything east because the wind kept catching the scope. To the south the light domes were much worse than anything I remembered. We looked at Mars through Andrew's 18", but the wind kept vibrating the scope. Still we were able to see some surface features.
Sander had to leave at 10. Andrew and I decided we had enough and left also.
Hopefully the crew that went to LSA faired better. Next time I will get my reservation into FPOA and observe in a more sheltered spot.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 04, 2005 11:51:58 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 16, 2006 22:01:00 PT