23 October 2004

Observing Location	CSP
Atmospheric Conditions	This was the last monthly AAA solar observing session for the season. The weather forecasts were predicting sun with some clouds. When I woke up this morning I had a beautiful blue, cloudless sky. By 1100 when I was heading for the subway there was still a nice blue sky but it was about 50% obstructed by broken clouds. When I got out of the subway at 86 St shortly before noon the sky was completely obscured by gray clouds. Bruce reported a similar experience getting to the park from up near the George Washington Bridge. It was so bad he didn't even bother setting up the 8" SCT. There were a few times when you could see blue patches low on the western horizon but either they weren't very big or never came over us. It was a lot colder than they had forecast too.
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binoculars with Baader film filter - Charlie Meade Go To SCT (4" ?) with Baader film filter - AAA member
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Bruce Kamiat one other AAA member

Target	Sun
Time	23Oct04; 1300 EDT
Category	Solar
Comments	Most of my observing was done through thinner patches of cloud so detailed observations were difficult. It was a long time before the clouds got thin enough that I could even find the sun through the filter. Any fine details were lost in the movement of the cloud film. There was a nice line of sunspots marching across the face of the sun. They weren't very big but some of them were complex. And some of what I am calling individual sunspots have been lumped together with one sunspot number. To the left of the meridian I counted six sunspots. They were primarily small ones. Five were in a row from the meridian back to the limb about the level of the equator (the SOHO photos show all the spots but NASA only has two numbered spots there). The sixth was over by the limb and down lower on the disk. To the right of the meridian I was seeing sunspot 684 as having three distinct components. The largest element was to the right and was very black, possibly with a penumbra around it. In the middle was a vertically elongated component which was much smaller. The smallest component was to the left. This sunspot is 5x the diameter of earth.

Observing Location	TotL
Atmospheric Conditions	It was heavy overcast still. There were a few places where it was a little thinner and it looked like it might have been starting to break up so I stayed until after the appointed time but never saw a clear patch of sky.
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binoculars
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Iridium Flare
Time	23Oct04; 1450 EDT
Category	Satellite
Comments	There was a Magnitude -6 Iridium flare predicted for 1446 this afternoon for Central Park. I went over there after the AAA solar observing session at Carl Shurz Park but it was too cloudy to see the sky.

Observing Location	South Street Seaport
Atmospheric Conditions	As long as I was going to be down at the South Street Seaport anyway I went down a little early just in case it had broken up enough to be able to see this flare but didn't have any luck. It was darker than it should have been during civil twilight. When I left the sea chanty sing at 2300 there were no clouds around the moon. But when I got back to the Bronx around midnight about 50% of the sky was stratus covered.
Instruments	Naked-eye Observing
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Iridium Flare
Time	23Oct04; 1850 EDT
Category	Satellite
Comments	This was to have been a flare of the same satellite I tried to observe four hours ago from Central Park. The sky was so cloudy it wasn't even worth walking up onto the Brooklyn Bridge to get a better view of that patch of sky.