Coyote April 15

by Rob Hawley

>From the forecasts I feared we were going to get blown around. As it was by sunset the winds were light. The temps seemed in the low 50s to mid 40s. There was no dew.

At least 10 cars showed last night. Among the folks I knew were my long time observing buddies Robert and Sean. Two of my Australia/Plettstone group Albert and Bob were also there.

As predicted the seeing was about as bad as I had ever seen it. Fortunately last night I was not looking for planetaries since ever star looked like one.

The transparency was also not ideal. There was a lot of sky glow and the light domes were much worse than normal.

I noticed that I had not seen many of the "Eye Candy" galaxies. So I spent the evening looking at bright stuff. The seeing was so bad I decided not to log anything since all of the objects deserved a look on a better night. The best of the evening was 4490. 4490 has an interesting hook toward its companion

http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/n4490.html

Another one was a barred spiral with the spiral being faintly visible. Unfortunately, since I was not taking notes I do not remember the number.

Rob Hawley