Last night was a really excellent observing night. The sky was dark (at least until about 1 a.m., before moonrise) and seeing and transparency were good. I was fortunate to be able to enjoy the night at the MM44 site with some good friends, including Alfredo. This picture shows Alfredo with his usual setup, imaging with a piggybacked refractor on a f/6.3 LX200.
I've had a lot of star parties with Alfredo and tonight's was a bit of a "going-away" party since he will likely be moving soon. I know we'll see him again though. Also at the MM44 party tonight were Steve and his brother-in-law Richard, with their 8" Ultima and 10" Dob. We had hoped for a couple of others but they didn't make it, too bad because the sky was really nice.
I was too tired from working so much lately to set up for imaging, so I just put up the 12" LX200GPS and popped an eyepiece in for some visual. I'm glad I did, it has been too long since I've really enjoyed visual observing, and my visual skills might be getting a bit rusty.
The Messier Marathon is next week and I'm planning to do it, so tonight I did some practicing. I didn't really get started until about 9:30 and I purposely made it a casual practice run, but I still managed to snag 67 of the 110 Messier objects before moonrise. Most of the rest would not have been visible until later anyway - there is a "lull" period around 1:30 a.m. where Marathoners are waiting for the next targets to rise.
The temperature was really nice (stayed above 60 degrees most of the time we were out there), and virtually no breeze - just the kind of perfect night that casual stargazers hope for. It would be really great if we got the same weather next weekend!
On the way home I was considering stopping in at another star party, this one at Steve's (the other Steve) observatory. They were planning to do a trial run for the Pluto occultation next week, Steve will be using one of my cameras to attempt to get some photometry data during the event. Unfortunately it is the same night as the Messier Marathon and I'm going to do that instead, but it sure sounds like a fun project. Anyway I didn't end up stopping there, tried to call to see if they were still at it and got no answer so I just continued on home to get some much needed rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment