Sess.#291 8:15-11:30 lm=5.3(at best) s=7/10 Very Hazy!
Got fooled this time by all of the weather reports that kept saying
"clear" on every TV and Web soucre I could find. I should'a trusted
my eyes when I saw the sun dogs in the sky from Orleans.
Still Richard, Bruce and myself tried to make the best of the poor
situation. The evening began with no better than 4.3 mag. overhead.
M3 - A repeated target this evening. Once acquired, one could just
barely make out individual stars popping in and out of vision.
Eskimo Nebula - Looked fairly good in spite of conditions. The colour
wasn't nearly as pronounced as usual, but it was very visible, with
the central star, nonetheless.
Jupiter - Getting low in the skies now. Two of the moons were closer
together on one side of the planet.
Saturn - It shows how bad conditions were that we could not see Saturn
to the naked eye, and had to sweep the general area to find a ghostly
version of it. Cassinni's division was difficult to see at all.
M64 - Took this on as a challenge object. I managed to find the
location fairly quickly, but it was very hard to confirm a sighting.
It was much like looking at a 13.9 mag galaxy in the 8" on a clear
night. Everything turns into an instant challenge objects, in haze
like this.
Castor - split though churning a bit. (sep = 3.9")
Gamma Virginis - split though requiring 400x (sep = 1.5") Note that
this one split in both Bruce's and my scope. A little touch more
collimation correction is probably required on his scope, I think.
Polaris - nice double to split. One bright and one much fainter star.
It can be a challenge sometimes to get your scope to point to polaris,
depending on your polar alignment accurary. Still, one of my
favourite doubles.
Beginner's Corner:
On nights like this, you take advantage of what's there, and adjust
your sights accordingly. The seeing was not too bad at 7/10, so you
could focus on splitting some closer double stars. Globulars and
bright planetaries would show well. Galaxies are a bad idea.
Also, aim overhead where there's less of a layer of haze. If you can
find targets on a night like this, then you'll find it easy to do in a
clear night where the target actually shows up in your viewfinder.
What I actually enjoyed most was the company...
Roland Prevost
PS- Great report Bruce. I just love reading observing reports. I
didn't really need to write mine, this time. I put it in, as a place
holder, only because I'm counting down to 300 sessions.
PPS- Ricardo! Does your back say: "Next time, don't forget to bring
your chair?"
