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

[Mark South]

Robert, I'm glad you had a great night.  wish i could have gone  
stargazing there.   glad to hear also that you weren't booted outta  
there!
thanks to Jayme et al.  for all the hard work getting us a permit!  I  
will need to get a permit soon.
mark

*********************
Mark South
md_south at mac.com
http://web.mac.com/md_south




On Mar 28, 2008, at 2:26 PM, 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
>
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