[Chaos-l] Observing at Jayme's house: OMG!, I killed Walter!

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

Oops!  I forgot Walter was there.  That wasn't very nice of me.  Hi  
did manage to get his mount working, despite the uncooperative nature  
of the computer therein.  At the end of the night, he was telling it  
where to go, and it was going there.  Very nice.

Sorry, Walter.

J.

On Jun 12, 2010, at 1:29 PM, Jon Stewart-Taylor wrote:

> Hi all.  Three  of us (Mike Gallagher,  Robert Nielsen, and myself)  
> accepted Jayme's invitation to observe at his house last night (June  
> 11th).  The weather was semifavorable, with clear and decently  
> transparent skies, but Very Heavy Dewing.  My intention to Marathon  
> the Virgo Cluster galaxies was done in by the dew, and the fact i'd  
> forgotten to bring my anti-dew equipment.  The Telrad was useless  
> and the finderscope nearly so: i had to keep all the caps on  
> everything unless i was actually looking through it, and even then i  
> had to wipe the eyepieces about once a minute.
>
> Other than that, it was a very nice night.  There were very few  
> bugs, which was very nice. The temperature remained comfortable,  
> neither hot nor chilly, very nice.  The tourist traps were still  
> observeable, and were very nice.  In the evening we had 3 planets,  
> especially Saturn, which looked very nice.  There were a surprising  
> number of meteors (no significant shower is active) including one of  
> at least 1st magnitude which left a brief trail, very nice.
>
> The best object of the night was probably the Trifid (M20) through  
> Robert's 12", with the telextender in, which made the nebula  
> ginourmous.  The dust lanes were prominent, stretching almost all  
> the way across the field of view.  Very nice.  The globular clusters  
> (tourist traps M3, 4, 5, 13, 15, 22, 92, plus the "little ones") get  
> an honorable mention.  With the clear steady skies supporting high  
> magnifications, they were very nice.
>
> Jayme and i stuck it out 'til the wee small hours waiting on Jupiter  
> and the morning Comet McNaught.   Jupiter early on was so low that  
> it really wan't much, but after an hour it sharpened up very nicely,  
> and the missing belt was prominent in it's absence.  The comet was  
> detectable in Jayme's binoculars, and easily seen in his refractor/ 
> reflector tandem,  Very ni-, well, actually, it was a faint fuzzy.   
> Hardly worth staying up for.  Not detectable unaided-eye, no visible  
> tail or really any structure in the binoculars or scopes.  Jayme  
> took some images, and the raws on the back-of-the-camera display  
> showed a good deal more detail, so he may yet produce some (last  
> time) very nice pictures of the comet.
>
> J.
> -- 
> Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
> Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos
>
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-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos