FP 3/26/2006 - 110 down 0 to go

by Rob Enns

My telescope for the evening was a Celestron N8i, a singled armed 8" cat.

47F at sunset with a light wind from the West. There were clouds far to the West, South, East, and North, but amazingly the sky over the peak was clear. I looked at M42 to get started. The fifth star in the trapezium was winking in and out with a 24mm Panoptic (85x).

I then trained the scope on Saturn. It was quite steady and the Cassini division very prominent. A number of moons were visible and brown bands on the surface were easy to see. This was with a 9mm TMB/Burgess Planetary (a Radian knockoff) at 226x. The wind was moving the scope around a little bit, but it was manageable.

By 7:15pm I could see the clouds heading my way from the West so I spun the scope around to look at targets in Ursa Major. Navigating by telrad I quickly found M97, M108, M82, and M81. Then I threw in NGC 3077 and M51 for good measure. By 7:45pm I had only 1 object remaining to complete all the Messiers but the clouds had obscured most of the sky. It continued to get worse and by 8:15 most of the sky was covered.

Munching on a slice of cold pizza I matched wits with a raccoon who was very intent on getting into my mini cooler. After he surprised me twice I knew I was beaten and locked the cooler back in the truck. The clouds seemed to be thinning into high bands, so I decided to wait around a while.

By 9pm things were looking much better, the sky had cleared and seemed amazingly transparent. I'm not sure if it was only my impression based on the high cloud that had been around only minutes before, but I could see all kinds of faint things naked eye. Stars blazing everywhere! It was great!

With only NGC 5866 (the M102 stand-in) remaining I turned the scope back to Ursa Major only to find a power pole between me and completion of my Messier survey. I disconnected the dew heaters and carried the scope 2 pads to the West. At 9:10pm I observed NGC 5866. Fin.

Flushed with success I went back to Saturn with the 9mm TMB. It was astoundingly steady so I threw caution to the wind and tossed on a 2x barlow for 452x. Still steady! I'm still a newbie in this hobby but this is by far the best seeing I've, well, seen. This time I made a sketch and it seems I was looking at Hyperion, Titan, Iapetus, Tethys, Mimas, Rhea, and Dione.

37F at 9:40pm, 97% RH. Dew heaters on thermo-nuclear.

I rolled out at 10:15pm, passing 5 or 6 deer on the way down.

Jamie, my logs are heading your way as soon as I get them organized.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Mar 27, 2006 09:12:56 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Mar 27, 2006 20:56:43 PT