October 15/16, 2009: Plettstone

Michelle Stone

Seeing conditions here were excellent. The sky was rock steady.... the sort of thing that I see only once in a couple or three years. I put my 5" refractor on Jupiter for most of the night jumping to globulars, open clusters, and 13th mag galaxies on my list every few minutes. The binoviewers with 15mm Panoptics spent most of the time on the scope for the Jovian world.

I copped some views through the 20 and 22 inch scopes. It was a great night to look at the big bright stuff with big glass. M31 and M33 showed magnificent detail in Greg's 22 incher. I enjoyed moving up the dust lanes. The veil also showed incredible detail across the board.

Humidity was high and provided some problems for Albert and Greg with their eyepieces dewing up a bit. It truly was a sopping wet night. They had to use a hair dryer to warm them up from time to time. I run heaters in my observatory, so I didn't have to deal with those issues. Eventually, we packed it in because everything was just getting so wet. Even my computer in the observatory which is covered was getting substantial dew on the keyboard. We observed till 1:30 AM or so.

It is important to note with both Greg's and Albert's low profile scopes and open designs that they had no dewing on their primary mirrors. We shut down because everything else was wet. I know that there have been a number of discussions about this issue with the low profile designs, but here is a case in point... .those large mirrors don't dew up easily.

Michelle