Coe Sat Oct 21 2006

by Lance Boehm

Simply a wonderful evening. There were about 15 or so observers in all. Conditions were warm...barely long sleeve weather. Seeing went from good to excellent to OK by the time I left.

I was using my WO FLT110 F6.5 APO and Losmandy G11. Binoviewer installed for the 2nd half of the the session. I was trying out (for the 2nd time) a couple of Burgess/TMB Planetary eyepieces I recently picked up. They are really quite good. In fact I prefer them to the TV Radians in the shorter focal lengths (9mm, 5mm, 4mm, 2.5mm). Give them a look if you can. A real bargain at $99 each.

A few of the objects I can recall looking at:

Comet C/2006 M4 (SWAN) - hint of a tail...it was low in the West
Rasalgethi (Alpha Herculis) double
M13
Epsilon Lyrae [double double without cheese :)]
M57
T Lyrae (carbon star)
M27
M71
Struve 2628 (in Aquila)
Gamma Delphinus
North American Nebula (saw the outline, not much more)
Omicron 1 Cygni
Veil (the whole thing all at once in the 31mm Nagler - just awesome) Albireo
M33
M15 Double cluster - looks very 3D in the binoviewer Eta Cassiopeiae Iota Cassiopeiae (pretty triple) Looked for the California Nebula but didn't see it M36
M37
M38

To cap off the evening I took a peek at M42. Still pretty low, but a nice view anyway. Winter is coming!

There were 2 observers left in the lot when I departed at 2:30AM. On the way down, I caught a family (of 5) raccoons just as they started crossing the bridge. They had nowhere to go to get away from me so I ended up following them slowly all the way across. They certainly didn't like being caught with no other direction to go!

Bring on the REM time...

-Lance