There were about 10 observers at Montebello tonight (2/22/03).
The seeing was quite good we had high thin clouds move over, but
most seemed to be to the east of us. There was some dewing but not
too bad. As I was leaving about 12:30am the dew had cleared and the
skies were more transparent. I got to MB about 6:45pm.
I was using my 6" refractor. Early, it was easy to see six stars in the
Trapezium. The small companion star to the eastern belt star in
Orion was easy to see. Saturn was showing very nice detail. A little before
Sirius
transited I tried to see if I could find "the Pup". Another observer there
had suggested trying to see it. We both looked. We did see a much
less bright spot at about 4:00 o'clock, near the outside edge of the
series of defraction rings. I was using a 90 deg star diagonal with
a binoviewer stuck in the diagonal like a large eyepiece. The binoviewer
was pointing up. If I remember correctly we were using close to 300x.
In the early evening Jupiter was showing thin curved lines in the EZ.
By about 9:45 pm the GRS was in full view. there was much more
detail. White ovals were following the GRS. I should have made
notes and made sketches.
About 11pm I looked at M3 and M51. They weren't anything to write
home about in my 6". They looked much better in another observer's
11" SCT. The last object I tried was the close double star Porrima.
It was a little low for best observing but it was split. You could see two
not so nice Airy discs almost touching.
Equipment:
AP 155EDFS 155mm f/7 triplet APO refractor
Zeiss binoviewer and AP barlow element used
directly in an AP Maxbright star diagonal.
Zeiss Abbe Ortho eyepieces (10mm used to
view The Pup. The binoviewer has a 1.25x corrector.
Other eyepieces used, Pentax SMC-XLs used in
mono mode with the Maxbright diagonal.
Rich
AP 155EDFS (155mm f/7) APO triplet refractor.