[Chaos-l] Observing Report From Farrington Point Last Night

[Terry Crook]

As they would say in England: Jolly good show, lads!
Chaos has overcome governmental bureaucracy once again!

Sorry I couldn't join you last night, Robert, as 
it looked like a dandy, clear, mild, windless evening.
My kind of stargazing weather!

At 02:26 PM 3/28/2008, Robert Nielsen wrote:
>Yes, you read that right ... from Farrington Point!
>
>Jayme was nice enough to bring a semi-official-looking permit from the
>NC Wildlife Commission by my house on the way home from work yesterday,
>and I thought it would be a good idea to try out the new permit first
>thing!   So I showed up at the Farrington Point Boat Ramp about 7:45,
>set up my telescope, and waited for it to get dark.
>
>The skies were clear ... and as I noted last week ... the air was such
>that I got very stable, pinpoint stars (I think that means the "seeing"
>was good).   As a result, I got very good views of Saturn (pushed to
>about 250X magnification) and even Mars showed a tiny bit of structure
>in my LX-200 10".   The skies were moderately transparent, but the sky
>glow from Raleigh was especially bad to the east ... so my primary
>targets for the night (galaxies in Ursa Major) were visible, but not
>spectacular.    Still, I got to see M3 (one of my favorites) before the
>night was over.
>
>Interestingly (probably because UNC was playing their game at the time)
>there was almost NOBODY at the boat ramp.  After 8:45, I had the place
>to myself.   No headlights!
>
>One ranger / wildlife officer did come by ... shined his spotlight on me
>... and asked if I was stargazin'.    I said I was, and I had even
>brought a special-use permit.   He said he didn't need to see it and
>wished me luck and drove off.   I don't know if anyone else will get
>this reaction, and so I would highly recommend getting a permit from me
>or Jayme if you are planning on observing there ... but it seems the
>rangers have been notified already of our permit and will let us observe!
>
>Nice work to everyone who helped get us "legal" at Farrington.   It
>appears we are back in action!
>
>Robert Nielsen
>
>_______________________________________________
>Chaos-l mailing list
>Chaos-l at rtpnet.org
>http://rtpnet.org/mailman/listinfo/chaos-l

TaurusTerry in Chapel Hill, NC
35° 57' N  79° 02' W

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/chaos-l/attachments/20080328/00cee1cf/attachment.htm