The four of us (Ray Duval, Pete Santangeli, David Kingsley and me) all had
an enjoyable time observing up at the SW parking lot at Fremont Peak last
night. It was very quite up there since all camping is closed until next
March. The temperature remained pretty much at 28°F 'til 12 am with the RH
approaching 85% at that time. I took a naked-eye limiting magnitude test at
8 pm choosing the constellation of Andromeda which was overhead at that
time. It came out to be mag. 6.5 and I had to shield my sight from the
bright 4-day old moon to get that great result. The transparency level was
very good along with 65% RH at that time. Seeing was diffraction limited
early on for my 20" Dob but turned softer by 10 pm. There wasn't any wind
and no dewing on our scopes the entire duration until 12am when we packed
up. After laboring to find my first few Herschel II objects with my 20" Dob,
I'm realizing that I need an optical finder (8x50, 9x60, etc.) on my Dob
instead of the Telrad that I've used since the beginning. I need to star hop
to find mag. 13 objects in remote areas and the Telrad is useless for this
activity. The Telrad worked fine with finding Herschel 400 objects since
that are brighter.
Pete S. ran his battery down so low he couldn't start up his van to leave
but did jump start it with his extra deep-cycle battery he had. I ended up
having a different problem leaving the in my SUV at 12:30am. I in my SUV
ended up 'crawling' down the mountain at 10 mph because of a surprise
ABS/ESP electronic malfunction with the 4-wheel braking system. As I stepped
on the gas pedal to drive, the vehicle's four all-drive wheels would
continually lock up as I stepped on the gas. It was like stepping on the gas
and the brakes at the same time. The SUV would continually want to brake and
lock up all four wheels as I used the gas pedal. It took me 45 minutes to
make it to the bottom of the Fremont Peak where I could try to speed up and
get past the braking problem. The brakes did work but just too much. The
intermittent ice on the roadway wasn't a problem for the 4-wheel drive,
though. This was my first experience with this type of electronic problem.
By the time I made it to the bottom, speeding up to 30 mph erased the
braking problem but the ESP warning light that stayed on 'til I made it home
in Monterey 45 minutes later. This morning, I drove around the block and
there was no problem or warning light showing. I'll still have things
checked out tomorrow.
Peter Natscher
Monterey
> From: Bob Jardine <rljtac@No-Spam>
> Reply-To: The Astronomy Connection <sf-bay-tac@No-Spam>
> Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 14:42:44 -0800 (PST)
> To: The Astronomy Connection <sf-bay-tac@No-Spam>
> Subject: [TAC] How was it last night?
>
> How was the observing last night at Coe and CLP and FP? I haven't seen
> any reports yet.
>
> It looked very clear from Cupertino, although I was stuck at home
> entertaining relatives and friends. Silly me, earlier in the week I
> gave one of the guests the choice of Friday, Saturday, or Sunday
> evening for a get-together. Wouldn't you know they would pick the one
> clear night!
>
> I hope everyone had a great night out!
>
> Bob J.
>
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