[Chaos-l] Farrington report

[Michael Hrivnak]

I forgot to mention the Globe at Night project.  I looked at the charts, and 
the Farrington sky just slightly exceeded the magnitude 4 chart.  Had it been 
less humid, it might have come about half-way to the magnitude 5 chart, but no 
better I think.

Michael

On Thursday 19 March 2009 00:43:08 Michael Hrivnak wrote:
> Tonight was a good evening for observing.  Walter Fowler and I were the
> only attendees.
>
> Walter had a new GOTO mount to try with his televue refractor.  We worked
> out some kinks and figured out how to get it working.  Once the mount
> stopped "locating" objects in the mud and conceded that they were in the
> sky, it was quite a lot of fun to use.  It will make an ideal
> public-observing-session setup.
>
> Walter had another new toy: at WSP he picked up a used Televue Powermate 5X
> barlow.  You heard me.  That's 5, as in five.  After I initially dismissed
> it as pure silliness, he talked me into trying it on Saturn with my scope. 
> I dropped in my Pentax 10mm eyepiece, which put the magnification at a
> whopping 1027x!  When you could get Saturn into the field of view, it was
> huge!  All 5 visible moons were on the same side of the planet, and
> stretched nearly across the entire field of view.  Despite the crapshoots
> that were focusing and aiming the scope, during brief moments as Saturn
> zipped across the field of view, there was a lot of detail.  I saw the
> shadow of the rings on the planet surface and even saw empty space through
> the rings on either side of the planet.
>
> I did a side-by-side comparison of my Pentax 10XW with Walter's Nagler 9.
> They show nearly identical fields of view, but the presentation is
> different. Despite more magnification, the Nagler actually caused objects
> to look smaller. The field of view, however, extended all around in typical
> Nagler form.
>
> As for objects, I mostly cruised through the highlights of my last
> observing session.  Early on, we spotted the remains of the Cosmos 1939
> Rocket moving through Cancer at about 3.6 magnitude.  The air was quite
> still, and I found lots of detail in some great objects while the dryness
> lasted.  Walter left around 10:20pm.  By 10:45, I noticed that the sky was
> glowing more than usual, and everything was very wet.  A quick check with
> my iPhone revealed that the humidity in Pittsboro was 90% and rising! 
> That's way above the forecast, which is a shame.  I packed up at that point
> and headed home.
>
> Michael

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