Lick Observatory - June 17th SVP night

by Rich Neuschaefer

Six of us were "telescope volunteers", we have our telescopes set up outside so that the visitors can look through them while waiting to hear a lecture or view through the big observatory telescopes. Ralph Libby was on the west side of the observatory and the rest of us (Alvaro Martinez Echevarria, Jay Freeman, Michael Hanna, Greg Swisher and myself) were on the east side of the observatory.

The seeing was outstanding. I'm guessing most of the time the seeing was 8 or better (out of 10). I wish I had thought to check the steadyness of a stars defraction rings. However, Jupiter was showing a lots of detail. The transparency was very good. The sky was quite dark but it can be darker. I don't think there was any fog in the valleys to the west.

In back we had two 8" SCTs, one 120mm refractor, one 8" reflector (Dob) and one 155mm refractor. I think most of started with Jupiter bacause it was the easiest to find when the sky was still relatively bright. The GRS was starting to come into view. There were festoons in the the EZ, the NEB and SEB were highly detailed. There was an interesting thin dark band farther south. I wish I had more time to observe Jupiter last night and use the binoviewer but we were very busy with visitors wanting to look throught our telescopes. When observing Jupiter I was using a 5.2mm Pentax SMC-XL eyepiect giving about 208x in my AP 155mm f/7 APO refractor.

Visitors also wanted to see other objects. Several asked to see galaxies. My list of objects last night: Jupiter, M51, M81, M82, M57, M27, the Veil Nebula, M22, M8, M4, M80, and M17. I turned the scope back to Jupiter a few times. The GRS was very pale. Again, I wish I had more time to observer Jupiter and note all the features we were seeing.

Relatively late in the evening Jay found NGC 4565 in his 120mm refractor. It was relatively low in the west. The sky in that directiow was quite bright with the glow from San Jose, but it was easy to see the beautiful edge on galaxy. Jay was seeing the dust lane. I really surprised Jay could find it in skies that bright with his 120mm.

There was a light breeze most of the night. The temp was about 67 deg F when I left around 2:30am. The air was quite dry. We were getting little static shocks when we handed things to each other. About a third of the way down the hill at the CDF station the temp was 50 deg F and on the valley floor it was about 56 deg F.

They observatory staff was showing Saturn and later Jupiter in the 40" reflector. They were also showing objects through the 36" refractor but I didn't hear what they were observing.

It was another great night Lick!

Rich