Last night around 10 pm, thing settled down for me in E. san Jose, as well.
It was the best I ever saw Jupiter in in the new lx90. At 200x, I could
make out outlines around the GRS and saw cloud bands in the bottom of the
planet. Up until then things were swimming as usual, but I'm glad I waited
it out for those few precious moments!
Bob
At 11:01 AM 12/31/1999 -0800, you wrote:
>Last night my backyard offered up some of the best seeing that I seen in
>a long time. Jupiter was phenomonal for seconds at a time showing as
>much detail in my 8" newtonian as I've ever seen. However, the "seconds
>at time" degraded pretty quickly with dew. After a time the scope looked
>like it had been sprayed with the garden hose. The eyepieces would dew
>over in seconds, but more disturbing was the secondary. It would also
>dew over. I think part of it comes from my breath and the dewpoint. I
>can fix the eyepiece with a hairdryer, but am wary of warming the
>secondary for fear of destroying the temperature adaption of the mirror
>and thus the wonderful image quality. Any ideas? ... Bill
>
>ps: Just spent six days camped in the backcountry of Death Valley with
>three really good nights. No dew there! It was dark to the horizon in
>almost all directions (except Beatty and Trona). I spent hours just
>bouncing around from sight to sight. The showcase sights like M42 and
>the Pleiades had incredible detail. There was very obvious nebulosity
>around all of the bright members of the Pleiades and delicate detail in
>M42 that occupied me for quite some time. I picked off a number of
>planetaries that have been on my list. We were camped at lat. 36
>degrees, 19 minutes and had a direct view of the southern horizon. For a
>couple of minutes each evening Canopus would poke its head over the
>horizon (dec: -52d, 41m). Big 4WD trucks are great. They carry campers
>and telescopes to extremely remote locations and allow fantastic
>observing while living in relative comfort. No neighbors for miles. I've
>noticed that Annette sometimes gets nervous on the way to our campsites.
>You know, locked down in 4wd low range and grinding up the mountain by
>some precipitous drop off. Now why would that be? :-)
>
>