Henry Coe on Sat June 7 2008. Poor seeing and Double Trouble

Mark Johnston

Out at Henry Coe the night of Sat June 7 the seeing was very poor as Rob has mentioned from his post about Coyote.

So ... What do you call Epsilon Lyra double-double when it is just a wide double in the eyepiece? Answer: Double trouble.

It was nice to scan naked eye to the East or use binoculars and the company was good with TonyH, MarkB, Rogelio (and a few kids in the car) present.

As I was looking for a few planetary nebula farther south it was especially difficult to find small ones because an object like NGC6153 looked very similar to the adjacent stars ... (Sort of a joke but close to the truth). (Using a filter dimmed the false planetaries) Mostly I spent time looking at DeepMap globular and open clusters down between Sag and Sco.

After 1:30 it was fun to spend some time in the Sagittarius star cloud (M24) which Jamie had turned me on to a while back. Start in the lower left at NGC6603 and wander up and to the right where you look for 'nothing'. B92 is the smaller of the 2 'nothings' and to it's right is the HUGE void of B93. Other objects are also present and it is quite a cloud.

Just before packing up it was time to check out the Ngc7331 deerlick cluster area and a few others to the East but most were a disappointment.

Mark Brada went over the kool design of one of Mark Wagner's scopes which I think was the 12.5" dob. This scope 'telescopes' both physically and optically. And looks physically very robust. I think it would make an excellent prop in a movie of some sort or another as well but it is not as cute as his daughters Dob.

Later,
MarkJ