I want to say a public thank-you to Michelle for opening her place to TAC
observers. I went up for my first time Thursday and had a very productive
and enjoyable night. I continued my Herschel 400 with an 8" Hardin Dob and
added 38 objects.
The only other observer was Albert Highe, first-lighting a beautiful new
13.5" (weight 46 pounds). Albert gave me my first look at the Horsehead,
just visible at about 60x through a H-beta filter.
At dusk the sky was unpromising; after a drive full of sun, just the last
10 miles were socked in by local cloud. This went away at dark, though it
remained quite damp, and the seeing was mediocre at best, with 4 Trap stars
and the Cassini division barely showing. It dried up a little as the
evening progressed, but around midnight as I had a galaxy in the field and
was checking it against the chart, when I went back to the eyepiece the
stars were there, but the galaxy was gone! I looked up and saw a halo
around Jupiter and I couldn't see Mizar. ZLM had dropped to about 4.0 in
about a minute. That was my cue to hit the hay. Woke at 0300 with the
summer Milky Way rising and the sky gorgeous, ZLM back to about 6.0, seeing
still poor (no belts on Jupiter), so nailed a few more galaxies in UMa,
played around in Virgo for a little while, had a little early Sag
eye-candy, then back to bed.
Looks like the next two evenings will be even better. Wish I could have stayed.
Carter
Received on Fri Mar 11 14:07:57 2005