July 26, 2003
Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton, San Jose, CA.
This was another of the concert nights. I'll make this a short report
and try to give more detail later.
I was using my AP 155 mm f/7 EDFS APO refractor. Early in the evening
I took a quick look at the Double Double. It split cleanly at less than
100x.
I believe Antares had transited, I thought it would be a good test of the
seeing.
The little companion of Antares was easy to see. Antares was showing a
few defraction rings and the companion was boldly showing at about the
10 o'clock position. I would rate the seeing close to an 8 of 10.
We looked at a number of objects. Mars cleared the trees relatively late
for me but that was fine. By that time it was 25 or 30 degrees up. There
was a long horizontal dark mark from the "left" side of Mars (my scope was
showing it reversed left to right and correct up and down) with a light area
around it. The was lots of more subtle dark marking over much of the rest
of the disc. I made a quick drawing. We had clouds move in around 1am.
I gave up after sucker holes were too few.
There was a temperature inversion at Lick. It would guess it was around 70
deg F. The wind was relatively light. A very nice night.
Rich