Sess#288 9:15-12:00pm FLO lm=6.1 s=3/10 var clouds+fog
It was 100% cloudy in Orleans when Attilla posted what I thought was
the rhetorical question: "is anyone observing tonight?" Anyway, in
spite of appearances, Bruce, Attilla and myself had an observing
session at the Fred Lossing Observatory. We were the only three
there that evening.
Sky cleared overhead as we got to Almonte. Bruce set up his still
fairly new (1 month) SCT-8" on his excellent Losmandy mount. Attilla
suggested we maybe use the observatory's 16" scope, so I focused on
that instead of setting up my own. There was some ground fog to look
through, a seeing of 3/10 max. and bouts of cloud cover, so conditions
were not ideal. Here are some of the targets we looked at (in no
order):
NGC4565 - beautiful spindle galaxy showing just a hint of dark lane
M3 - Bruce's view was good and quite bright
M101 - large and relatively non-structured
M51 - hints of spiral
Sombrero - hints of lane only. Nucleus bright.
Castor - ( sep 3.9" binary ) barely split in the 8"- very poor seeing
Gamma Leonis - same as Castor
Jupiter - much churning, low in the sky by the time we'd started.
Mizar - in 8"
Then, all in the same field of view, these eight galaxies:
M84, M86, & NGCs 4388, 4387, 4402, 4425, 4435, 4438
Things got covered over at 12pm, and Bruce's corrector plate got dewed
up completely, in spite of my lending him a dewcap and Kendrick
heaters set for 6/10 heat. Very rare indeed to have this happen.
The cause was that his scope was aimed nearly at Zenith and left there
for 30 minutes while it stood practically in ground fog. Also notable
was Attilla's green laser which was much more "Skywalker" than usual.
;-)
We tore down at midnight and Attilla made an entry in the FLO logbook.
We stopped at Denny's in Kanata on the way home and chatted over
"breakfast" for about an hour. It was fun, amigos.
PS - Hwy#44 is also called Hwy#49 and this can lead to confusion.
