premliminary OR for Saturday night, shallowsky first

by Jamie Dillon

No supplication before the finder scope altar for me though, all my scopes are trained.

This is the man who years ago said, "Starhopping gives me a headache."

Another longterm TACo, the Beastmaster, said about Jupiter ...

The great pale spot was almost dead center of the planet with it's four bright moons doing a little dance around the planet.

OK, this is strange. Kingsley, Wright and I were looking at it too. It right along the equator, so we were calling this thing a big white oval. The GRS is supposed to be in the SEB, not right midships. What we were looking at was definitely between the two equatorial bands. I thought I had you there, compa, just looked up the GRS transit times, and 2 am Sunday our time the GRS was at the meridian facing in our direction. Has it really changed latitude that much?

As to the comet, we spent a whole lot of time watching the B and C chunks in a variety of scopes. Interesting that the B chunk was so far away from piece C, over 5 degrees, from the Keystone over into Corona. Tony Hurtado found the G piece in his 18. He used the chart to get it dead center, and we could see a little point source, ca 12th magnitude, with haze around it. Turns out Kingsley found the R piece using Skyhound, in his 14.5. In my 11", only the B and C pieces were possible. They were beautiful, with broad fans on both their tails. I only saw one tail on piece C.

Over at Ranger Row, in Robert Armstrong's 20", the tail on the C chunk showed as half a degree long. Fancy.

This was from the Peak on 29 April. More to follow. It was a great night. Sweet dreams to all the TACos and TAQueritas.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 01, 2006 23:43:27 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 May 04, 2006 21:13:53 PT