[Chaos-l] Observing Report - 6/17 at Farrington Pt

[Robert Nielsen]

Everyone,

Amidst about 50 boats being put in or pulled out of Jordan Lake, 
Robert Nielsen, Klaus Hoog, Terry Crook, and Vaughn Jett met at the 
Farrington Point boat ramp to view the conjunction of Saturn and 
Mars.   Farrington Point has quite a lot of trees around the 
periphery, and Robert showed up early with his divining rod to figure 
out the best place to set up.   We set up on the other side of the 
road from normal ... on a small knoll and as far away as we could get 
from the trees in the west ... but still in a position where we could 
see Jupiter.

We did get to see the two planets together in the west, and they 
weren't quite as close as I'd thought they'd be (about a third of a 
degree, forming a nice line with the star Asellus Australis in 
Cancer), and they were visible until about 10 PM.   Mars was very 
small, basically a small orange dot, but Saturn was magnificent as 
always.   Before finding those two planets, we all observed Jupiter, 
which showed quite a lot of detail (being close to 
opposition).   Jupiter was easy to find in the southern sky.   Saturn 
and Mars were more difficult in the west (because of the light from 
the sunset).  Once a couple of stars were up, I used the go-to 
abilities of my scope to point in the direction of the conjunction 
... we then all found it easily.   It was nice comparing the view in 
all the scopes.

We also looked at the objects Bryan and Jayme mentioned at the 
Tuesday meeting.   The air was very humid, and light from headlights 
caused quite a bit of background light, but again I used the go-to of 
my scope to find Y Canum Venaticorum (or La Superba, the carbon star 
in Canes Ventatici) M13 (which actually looked quite good), and NGC 
4565 (which unfortunately was washed out).     Klaus' scope covered 
over with dew ... but Vaughn kept trying with different (and wider 
view) eyepieces.

In another part of the parking lot, someone pulled in without a boat 
or trailer ... and seemed to be setting up something with electronic 
lights.   It looked like an astronomer to all of us, so we went over 
and introduced ourselves to Alan and Denise, who had their Meade 
LX200  8" scope and were practicing polar-aligning their scope.   We 
invited them to come to our next meeting or join us at the dark sky 
sight next weekend, and after everyone else had left, I went over to 
see the pictures he was taking with his DSI.   He seems to have quite 
a bit of talent using the DSI ... I hope he joins the club and helps 
me learn how to use it better.

So the sky wasn't the best ... but good for observing planets and 
that was the point of the evening.   So "tourist traps" (as Jon would 
call them) were an added bonus.   For some better skies (assuming the 
weather cooperates), join us next weekend at the dark sky site.

Until then, clear skies!
Robert Nielsen