[Chaos-l] Observing at Oxford last Friday

[Jon]

Hi all.  We did indeed have an observing session at the Oxford site.  
The weather was definitely chancy, with poor transparency, occasional 
bands of cirrus clouds, and high humidity.  This was compounded 
occasional heat lightning flashing.

In spite of that, it was a pretty good night.  I had the place to 
myself until fairly late (10 or 1030ish) when Greg showed up.  I hunted 
the brighter Messier objects, with the globulars in and around Ophiucus 
being the obvious targets. When Tim and brenda got home, we showed them 
some of the tourist traps.  Later i went after some of the large, 
bright IC clusters.

The highlight of the evening for me was my accidental discovery of mu 
Cephi.  It's a long-period variable star, and is intensely colored.  
When i looked it up in Burnham's, i found it was called "Herschel's 
Garnet Star", and that there a much fainter, but very deep red carbon 
star in the local vicinity.  Two new favorites for late summer and fall.

That's one of the things i like about observing.  There's always 
something new to track down, and often accidental "discoveries" like 
this give you something to remember.

J.

-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor: jcst at tripod.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/
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