Saturday, April 24th the PAS held a star party at Foothills Park, Palo Alto.
There were quite a few scopes and more visitors than usual. It was a great
night for observing. Shirt sleeve temps, no dew, clear skies and very good seeing.
I had my AP 155EDFS (155mm f/7 APO refractor) and my AP Stowaway 90 mm f/7
(92mm f/6.6). Both scopes were working well. I did most of my observing with the
155EDFS. The Moon was showing lots of detail. Saturn looked very nice with a
shadow of the planet on the rings and the crape ring was easy to see. Jupiter was
showing lots of detail, festoons, white ovals and GRS.
Late, after midnight I tried splitting Porrima. It was easy to see that it was a
double star but no black line between the Airy discs. It was just at the point
of starting to show a figure eight. I was using well over 400x. One of the
observers though maybe it would have shown the split if the seeing had been
dead steady. I was happy the way it looked given it is very close for my 6.1"
scope. Two years ago it was easy to see a black line between the two stars.
I also tried Nu Scorpio. All four components were easily split even though it
was nearly two hours from transiting. One of the double star experts suggested
trying Iota Leonis. It was a nice unequal double. The bright star is white and the
dim star is yellow. He also suggested trying Rho Leonis another interesting
unequal double.
It was a great way to kick off the PAS Foothills Park star party season.
Clear skies,
Rich
Received on Mon Apr 26 16:05:46 2004