Skunked

Richard Ozer

Out of a club of 180, three of us showed up, and one guy wasn't even a member. I was hoping to test out the ST-9 camera that I'd recently done some work on (drying out dessicant and the like), and things looked promising. I fired up the C14 and tested the pointing. Hmmm, no planets and it isn't dark yet.... Well, I'll send it over to Vega, that should be plenty bright. Looked in the eyepiece and no Vega. I found Vega by eye and noticed that the scope looked about 1 hour off. Oh! Right! Daylight savings time. Never mind that Windows had the right time from the GPS, and that theSky picks up the time from Windows, and that the scope gets its instructions from theSky. It's still and hour off! Well, I didn't feel like messing with Windows or theSky (too much like work); so I manually moved the scope over to Vega and re-sync'd. I then clicked on Deneb, saw it centered in the eyepiece and thus determined that all was well.

After hooking up the camera and cooling it off (like it really needed to be cooled off), I decided to take some test shots of the ring, and just as I began to do so, a cloud of fog enshrouded the mountain. The humidity jumped to the high 90's and before I could say Zubinelgenubi, a perfect sheet of ice formed on the corrector plate. That's all she wrote, the fat lady sung, I was hoisted on my own petard, and it was over because it was over and the last man was out. To the new guy, I said, "this is what astronomy is REALLY all about."

I don't know about y'all, but I'm ready for some astronomy somewhere warm and tropsicle.

RO