Re: OR: Titan's shadow viewed with some determination 5/30/09

I wanted to see the transit but after driving back from a 10 vacation in AZ,
I wasn't willing to put in too much effort. Since completing my 22" scope.
my 12.5" has been disassembled and stored. I re-assembled the scope,
collimated it and got ready. The fog developed fast and I missed the event.

Next time:-/

GML

-----Original Message-----
From: tac-bounces@No-Spam [mailto:tac-bounces@No-Spam]
On Behalf Of Steve Gottlieb
Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2009 1:01 AM
To: TAC TAC
Subject: [TAC] OR: Titan's shadow viewed with some determination 5/30/09

Because I figured it was going to be completely clouded over in Albany on
Saturday night, I e-mailed Dennis Beckley and made plans to meet at his
house at 9:00 in Benicia to try and capture Titan's shadow transit. I've
seen this rare event twice but wanted to try for another. It was mostly
socked in when I arrived at Dennis', but we drove a few miles to Renato del
Rosario's. His house sits on a hill with a good southern horizon from his
background. Renato had his 12" Portaball already set up and Saturn was
visible though the transit hadn't begun yet. But by 10:00 or so, we were
completely clouded in at Renato's house, so Dennis and I decided to drive
further north hoping to escape to cloud cover.

We pulled off the road perhaps 10 miles from Dennis' house and found a dark
spot just off the freeway where there was a small break in clouds in the
direction of the moon and Saturn. By 10:30 we had Dennis' 10" scope set up
and were trying different eyepiece combinations as the seeing was fairly
soft. The best match seemed to be my 8mm Ethos and 7mm Pentax XW. Although
we had to be patient for the wind to stop shaking the scope and the seeing
to improve simultaneously, we both described a spot NE of center, just below
the ring. By 11:00 low clouds were covering up Saturn and our window of
opportunity finally closed. When I arrived back at home at midnight
I confirmed the location on StarryNight Pro, so the mission was
accomplished!

--Steve

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May 30, 2009: TAC Web Page Updated http://observers.org/TAC.cgi/Announcements/
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