Bill Cone and I met up at Coulter Row Friday night. Hey, it was in
the middle of a long weekend, the forecast said some 32% cloud cover,
it wasn't raining, and moonset was around 8 pm. Just before sunset
the sky looked decent. Not for long.
Here are the good parts. Cone got the full 50 cent tour of the parts
of the park we frequent. Ron Dammann was at the Observatory, having
just cleaned the mirror of the 30", which looked just spectacular. We
looked thru the Challenger at the Moon thru natural atmospheric
filters, then an impressionistic view of that very fancy galaxy ngc
253, and hints of the bright globular also in Sculptor, ngc 288. Met
the sons of Dammann and Morales, yes Rick Morales' boy, 16 and 17
respectively.
There were patches of stars between the clouds that were really clear
and beautiful, in Cassiopeia and Perseus. Didn't once look good
enough to set up. We had supper, enjoyed the dark and the quiet up
there, then were gone by 10.
Building credit, two weekends in a row. Our very own Dr Kingsley,
gonzo as he is, was right about Thursday night being the window, the
night of Thanksgiving, family dinner and all.
A good peaceful fun week to all,
DDK
-- Jamie Dillon <mavericks@No-Spam> <*> "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" from Ginsberg's Howl. -- What TAC Is About. http://www.observers.org/Join.shtml Webcam, DSLR, CCD Imaging use NorCal AI. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norcal_ai/ Designing and improving TAC's website. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/tac-ops/ Sub-scribe or Unsub-scribe from TAC http://seds.org/mailman/listinfo/sf-bay-tacReceived on Sun Nov 26 19:45:28 2006