MB Wed

George Feliz

Conditions:

Dark by 6:30 - gotta love it.

Dew - no problem up until 10:45 when I left, eyepiece case had some moisture, no optics impaired

Seeing - varied, but was good most of the night and very good around 8:30 for a while. I checked the "quality" of the split of the double-double in Lyra at those two times - both clean, but much steadier in the middle of the evening. Closer to the horizons the seeing was soft all night. Jupiter (early) and Mars (late) were low and swimming.

Wind - mostly none, a hint of breeze later.

Temps - reasonable, I had on 3 layers and did not use my jacket, nor my gloves until the last hour.

Comet - Very cool, if Joe Bob were there he would have checked it out.

Scopes - Mark had a C11 on a G11. I had my homemade 10", f/5 Highedesign.

Project - I was looking at galaxies from Pocket Sky Atlas that I've not covered from DeepMap600 or H400 or other random lists.

Kudos - To Mark for a big assist on my observing highlight of the night: NGC470/474/467.

The target was 474 in Psc. When I reached it, I noticed a bonus galaxy in the 34' field of view at 141x. I drew a picture so I could check later and had Mark confirm that he saw both. Fortunately he took time from his observing to check on his laptop so we could tell which was which. His eagle eye spotted a third galaxy, 467 nearby. Once we knew where to look we could spot all 3 easily. This nice trio of mag 11.5 - 11.9 galaxies has been mentioned before by M. Marcus at Lake Sonoma (8" SCT) and J. Dillon at Coe (11" dob). It was a fortunate night to be able to spot them at MB.

More Kudos - To Marek and David K. for the continuing inspiration to get out and observe even when the conditions seem marginal. Ya never know until you try.

Clear Skies,

George