by Marek Cichanski
Pentti, Andrew, and I observed at Montebello last night until moonrise, which was around 10:45 IIRC.
Some cirrus streamers drifted over us at times, but most of the sky was clear most of the time, and all of the sky was clear some of the time. No complaints here. It was plenty cold, as expected. My car's thermometer read 33 F in a couple of places while I was driving home. We all managed to stay pretty warm, but it required lots of gear. I had my dew heaters going, although I wonder how necessary they really were. Didn't see much dew forming on the scope, but the car certainly had plenty of dew, as well as a fair amount of frost on the roof.
Seeing was fairly good, probably about 3.4 to 4 (out of 5) by my judgement, especially later in the evening. I had some very serviceable views of Saturn. It's really nice to see both poles sticking out beyond the rings. It seemed to be that the planet had a more reddish color than the rings, which were more bluish. I'd never seen so much (apparent? real?) color contrast between planet and rings before.
It was a shakedown cruise for the modified finder scope on my Intes-Micro MCT. It had been a straight-through finder, but I cut off the back end and put on an Orion correct-image right-angle unit, along with a provision for turning the diagonal to suit your position. Very handy when working near the zenith! Now I need to find a way to make the red-dot finder work the same way, kind of like a Televue Starbeam with a flip-mirror. In fact, there's an even simpler solution for 'no crouch' pointing, but... I better not bring it up. It involves brackets and thread generators... forget I said anything.
I mostly looked at Messiers, surprise surprise. Also the Xmas Tree and the Tau CMa cluster. I don't look at this latter object nearly enough. I thought about all those guys down in Australia and New Zealand, who are looking at Ori and Pup and CMa and whatnot, while standing around in shorts and throwing a shrimp on the barbie. I later had a vivid dream about taking an impromptu January trip to Oz and seeing Crux and Carina riding high.
The Eskimo looked surprisingly good in my 6", even without a filter. Central star showed up nicely at high magnification.
Saw more detail in the spectrum of Betelgeuse that I ever had before. I swear, spectra are just like planetary detail. You gotta stare and stare and milk it for all it's worth.
Among other things, Pentti bagged M74 in his 5" MCT. Straight-through finder, EQ mount with manual tracking, starhopping in RA and DEC. Old-school cool, straight out of an Edmund Scientific book, and I say kudos. That is one dim Messier. He asked me to confirm the identification, and bingo, he had it big time.
Here's hoping that it's clear enough for a good Hogue tonight,
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jan 20, 2006 09:26:43 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 02, 2006 21:18:34 PT