Dinosaur Point and Fremont Peak last night

by Jamie Dillon

By 6 we'd all bailed from the Point, in various directions. Joe Bob, Santangeli, Lefebvre, Cone and I headed to the SW lot. I stopped at Doe Flat, behind the Observatory, on the way. Sure enough Liam's best buddy Andrew McCann and the astronomy club from Salinas High were there. Other buddies from town, Amanda and Josh were on board, along with Liam's chem teacher. They were having fun no matter what.

Now as to conditions, Peter Natscher, Mr Just the Facts, said,

The evening couldn't have been any better.

... by which on close reading he means the time from 0030 on. That's late night in most tables. The actual evening was cloud-filled. Yeah the sky was decent at 0030 by which time I was glad I could pack the car. My starhopping at that point was seriously impaired.

But meanwhile there's news. Pete Santangeli is now the Canadian Formerly Known as Moody. He says he's now the Deep and Random Canadian. OK then. That same Canadian wants you to know that he landed onto the field of S Cephei using a starchart. The imager hasn't lost all his chops.

We got to see Comet Swan with our binocs, way over in Aquila. Big fuzzy, with maybe elongation to the NE. That was cool.

For our swan song (different swan), Bill showed off S Cephei, a carbon star. This was around midnight, and it took 3 of us 15 minutes to do the hop. You gotta remember we'd done a lot of driving. The star itself is very pretty, like freshly polished copper. For a contrast, I showed off ngc 188 in Cepheus, just off Polaris, an ancient open cluster that looks old and worn out. Burnham has a great description of it.

The company was just superb. We all figured Peter had long bailed, shoulda rolled over to the Observatory area and maybe started a rumble. Had no idea Koop and Gleason were there, apparently others. I meanwhile wanna know how it was at Willow Springs. Seriously, I was wishing our dispersed colleagues well, even if we all weren't feeling that generous.

4 days before Thanksgiving, and I'm very thankful for really fun and interesting buddies. This means you. Just like the cats in the sig below.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 19, 2006 18:39:43 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Dec 13, 2006 21:30:44 PT