Lick Observatory Sat, 6-28-08

Rich Neuscheafer

We had a very nice night at Lick Observatory. Several of us volunteer at Lick to support their Summer Concert series and Summer Visitors Program. There were at least 5 of us there with our amateur telescopes.

The smoke wasn't too bad if you kept above about 20 degrees from the horizon. The seeing was very good. Even around 10:45pm Jupiter was showing some nice detail even though it was quite low. There was a moon and shadow transit on Jupiter. The NEB was dark with knots. The SEB looked like it was almost splitting. This was my first night this year looking at Jupiter. I was using about 208x with a Pentax 5.2mm SMC-XL eyepiece and AP 155mm f/7 APO refractor.

The visitors got see the usual show piece objects through our amateur telescopes I started by showing the Double Double in Lyra. Then I moved to M57, M27, Jupiter, M22, and M17. The Lick 36" refractor was also showing the Double Double. I'm guessing they were able to split it quite easily. It was nicely split in my 155mm. :-)

There was a temperture inverison. It was around 70 deg F behind the dome of the 36". There was almost no breeze where we were. A shirt sleeve night.

I got home about 3:30 am. Good thing I had a couple of cups of coffee at Lick.

Rich N.