It was an interesting night the Peak. There was an interesting group
of scientists and teachers interested in the planets. There were also
a number of campers and visitors also interested it seeing Mars in the
30" Challenger telescope.
for a couple of hours after dark the seeing was really bad. Mars was
twinkling
like a star. The Moon through the scope was fuzzy. Even in the afternoon
the
edge of the Sun was moving like I have never seen before through the FPOA
H-Alpha scope. However, the seeing did improve to maybe a 5 or 6 of 10
by about 10:30 pm. At times the seeing was really quite good. Peter
Natcher
had his excellent AP 10" MC and I was using my AP 180EDT APO. Peter's
10" MC took top honors for showing detail on mars. I took a look through
his
scope in a period when we had good seeing and his image was big, bright
and showing very nice detail in the southern polar cap that in my scope
wasn't
nearly as easy to see.
It was interesting talking to the professional astronomers. They enjoyed
being able to look through an eyepiece.
The night turned out much better than I expected.
Clear skies,
Rich