Blue Ridge

by Darrell Lee

Renato and I have gotten up there viewing twice this week - on Sunday night and tonight. I'm working on my AL Messier list, and starhopped my way to the big ones Sunday night with my XT10i: M42, M43, M41, M35, M33, M31, M32, M110, M46, M29, M81/82, and probably a few others while Renato worked on his projects with his Portaball.

Tonight Renato brought his refractor, but forgot a critical part (hmm, where have we heard that before). So he chose the objects, pointed them out on the star chart, and I hopped to them. Tonight I added M50, M47, M78, M79, M76, M34, M103, that I can remember.

Both nights weren't great as far as seeing and light glow, but they were productive. It's been such a lousy winter (just like last winter, come to think of it), we'd have been happy viewing with binoculars. I was able to see IC 1396 in Cepheus with binoculars tonight. Blue Ridge's north horizon is nice and dark. Its south and east horizons suffer from worse-than-Fiddletown's western conditions.

Posted on tac-sac Jan 24, 2006 23:31:28 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 02, 2006 21:41:31 PT