[Chaos-l] Little River last night

[Jon Stewart-Taylor]

Hi all.  Little River last night was a very nice night, as it usually  
is at the park when the weather cooperates.  We had a small crowd,  
maybe 2 dozen at the most, i think (Mickey?).  The Milky Way was  
prominent overhead, and stretched almost horizon to horizon, though  
without much detail.  The open-cluster tourist traps were very pretty,  
and the Ring and  Dumbell nebulae and M13 all performed to standards  
under the 5+ LM skies.  Surprisingly, i don't believe anybody  spent  
much time on M31.  I didn't even look at it, for two reasons.

First, In the early part of the night, i was (overly ambitious!)  
trying to keep 4 instruments turned on the same object, starting with  
Mizar and Alcor.  The four were: 10x50 binoculars (on  tripod), Denali  
15-45x zoom spotting scope (on tripod), Meade 60mm "Christmas trash"- 
type scope on alt-az mount, and 10" dob.  The idea was to show the  
differences in what you can see through the different types of  
instruments.  That worked to some extent, but one person really can't  
operate that many non-tracking instruments at once and still have time  
to chat.  Also, my telrad died early on.  First, the dewing was  
Ferocious, and i'd forgotten to bring the battery for the dew heater.   
When i tried to wipe the glass, the lens fell in.  I tried just the  
8x10 finder, but it was dewing also. The Denali proved too hard to  
find things in, especially after the dewing set in.  The binoculars  
were far enough away that most people didn't notice them, and i didn't  
have time to "advertise" them.  Mostly i split time between the 60mm  
and the 10".

Second, i eventually just spent the rest of the night on Jupiter  
(which was at least easy to find).  At the start of the night 3  
Galilean moons were visible, but towards the end of the night the 4th  
emerged  from behind the planet, starting as just a bulge, then  
gradually clearing the planet and moving away.  Research after-the- 
fact showed:
    Friday 2011-10-21 9:04 PM Io Occultation End (S -32 J 106 27)
Despite an unsteady atmosphere the seeing was surprisingly good in  
"waves": so good i took the 10" up to 200x.  A little patience would  
give off-and-on clear glimpses of detail in the bands, and especially  
a dark spot at the western limb of the planet.  At first i thought it  
was a moon shadow, but the geometry didn't seem right.  Then i thought  
it might be the Great Pale (formerly Red) Spot, but it was in the  
wrong band.  At this point, i think it was just a dark spot in the band.

I packed it in around 9:30, about 1/2 hour after the "official" end of  
the session.  Thanks to Little River and Morehead for hosting.

J.
-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor:  joncst at earthlink.net
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos