October 17, 2009: Fremont Peak

Rob Hawley

I was planning to do some private observing and imaging last night. As the high clouds rolled in I put my camera away. My scope followed soon after.

Since it was now dark before the start of the lecture I started running the Challenger so people could look at Jupiter through the clouds. As the lecture was going on we got the first of what turned out to be a series of sucker holes.

These continued and we started putting the scope on deep sky objects. Ron had been discussing M13 right at the time when the sky cleared in that direction. So everyone loaded out of the classroom and had a look. Ron continued the lecture while I started chasing clear sky. We got M31, then eta lyr, M51, M2, back to Jupiter, back to M31. By then it was about 10 PM most of the 50 or so people had left and a thicker band of clouds covered us. We shut the roof and went home.

Ron had been running a program the previous night and said the sky was spectacular.

Rob Hawley