What a great night at MB. Bob, thanks so much for calling in the permit and
for being such a gracious host. It was my first time at MB for observing
(I've hiked that area since I was a kid) and I was very pleasantly
surprised. The seeing was soft early in the evening, but by the time we
folded our tripods there were five stars in the Trapezium, and I'd been able
to chip away a bit at that Herschel 400 list - I'm learning to love open
clusters.
Warm weather prevailed all night, with a very light offshore breeze. And
you're absolutely right, Bob - we're very fortunate here to have been spared
the nightmarish events that are devastating the southern state. Our brush
with urban fire in Oakland was a terrible reminder, but the scale of
destruction in Southern California is almost unimaginable.
The opportunity to view with a variety of optics was fun. And it was a very
pleasant surprise to meet Doug and Michelle and try out their wonderful
image-stabilizing binocs. An electronic tripod - ain't science great? All
in all, a very pleasant evening in a surprisingly good site. I'll certainly
be back.
And Bob, your ears were right - it's an LX200GPS. ;-)
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Jardine" <rljtac@No-Spam>
To: "The Astronomy Connection" <sf-bay-tac@No-Spam>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 9:13 AM
Subject: [TAC] Shirtsleeves Night at MB (Tues 2003 Oct 28)
> The CSCs were looking pretty good for MB yesterday afternoon while I
> was at work, so I decided to head up there last night and skip the
> usual Wednesday event, when things looked set to degrade for the week.
>
> As I locked up the gate and left at 1:00 AM, I was still in my
> shirtsleeves, and I thought to myself: not once did I even consider
> adding another layer or even a hat. It was that nice. But then I had
> another thought: one of sorrow on behalf of our Southern California
> friends, because it is the same kind of warm fall weather (taken to a
> Santa Ana extreme) that causes so much fire danger. Best wishes to all
> SoCal TACOs and their families and friends.
>
> I spent the evening with three first-time MB-ers. First there was
> John, with a 10" Meade (an XL200, by the sound of it ;-). An
> experienced observer, for sure, but maybe new to the Bay Area...he had
> posted on TAC yesterday about a possible MB evening. John was also
> providing some nice classical music during the evening...thanks!
>
> A little later another pair walked in: Doug and Michelle, if I remember
> their names correctly. Nice folks. Asked politely if they could drive
> in, seemed to know the red light protocol. I explained a couple of
> rules (must agree to leave when the last permit holder (me) leaves, no
> smoking, etc.). They set up a 10" Orion on a big EQ mount and got down
> to business, Doug with the 'scope and Michelle doing Messiers with
> binocs.
>
> The four of us had a great time. The transparency was only fair, and
> the seeing started out soft, but it improved through the night. At the
> end, I wrapped up by splitting Gamma Ceti, a challenge posed by Peter
> McKone the previous night; I couldn't split it Monday night, as the
> seeing really sucked, but it was not too hard on Tuesday with TOBY at
> around 300X. Nice double -- on the Deepmap list -- pretty close and
> wide magnitude difference to boot. And easy to find because, you
> guessed it: nekked eye.
>
> We didn't see any Aurora, but we really weren't on the lookout towards
> the North, because of the big bad light domes in that direction.
>
> John and I did see one very bright meteor just as we were packing up --
> heading about WSW from the area of Cetus. And we both thought the same
> thought: Hermes? No, not the asteroid itself, of course. But we had
> both read that there may be some meteoric debris from Hermes as it
> makes its close approach to Earth -- it is going to shoot by here in
> the next few days at something like 0.007 AU away. Of course, since it
> isn't quite "here" yet, it can't be from this pass, but perhaps some
> debris left in its orbit from a past revolution. This meteor certainly
> looked like it could have been traced back to the approximate area of
> the sky where Hermes is.
>
> Interesting world we live in! Huge solar flares, near-Earth asteroids
> and their debris, deranged arsonists on the loose, and nice new folks
> out observing in all kinds of weather.
>
> Bob J.
>
>
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