29 March 2005

Observing Location	TotL
Observational Period	2015-2230 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	It had been white outside my windows all day today and the Clear Sky Clock said it would be cloudy with poor seeing and transparency. Just after sunset I sent out to go buy an inkjet cartridge and found that the sky was very clear and a deep blue with the early stars shining brightly. I should have gone back up to the apartment for my equipment but continued downtown. By the time I was done with dinner and my shopping it was 2000 EST and the sky still looked clear but there was a strong wind with gusts that occasionally made it difficult to walk. I headed over to the park since I was in the neighborhood anyway but didn't expect to find anyone there. About 2200 EST the clouds started to bet bothersome but the brighter stars were able to punch through.
Instruments	Naked-eye Observing - Charlie Celestron 7x50 binoculars - Ken Orion SkyView Pro 6LT EQ Reflector - Derrick
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Ken (cyclist) Derrick

Scarey as it sounds, I was the one who knew the most about the sky last night so spent most of the time being tour guide. I did some naked eye observing but did not make a concerted naked-eye limiting magnitude assessment. I was seeing more stars in Gemini than I have seen recently. ι Gem (m3.81), θ Gem (m3.62), λ Gem (m3.60) and ξ Gem (M3.38) were all seen. In Taurus I noted θ₁ Tau (m3.86) and θ₂ Tau (m3.42). Up in the north I could split Mizar and Alcor. I identified two of the stars of the head of Hydra (ε and ζ)

I tried out Ken's new binoculars but had a lot of trouble focusing them with their stiff individual focusing eyepieces. I was looking in the neighborhood of M40 and may have seen something there but with the poor focus and the wind moving me around it is a low certainty sighting.

We looked at M42, Jupiter, and Saturn in Derrick's scope. The wind was buffeting the scope making it harder than usual to focus. I am not sure I like a long tube where the part you are touching is so far from the point of attachment to the mount. The scope seems to move around a lot and I overfocus in both directions then have to wait for the scope to settle, which it didn't because of the wind. The views of M42 were the best. There was too much scope motion to see the nebulosity but I saw at least three of the Trapezium stars. A high power eyepiece was used to view Saturn and Jupiter and the images seemed to be soft to me. Jupiter nearly filled the field of view. I could see the North and South Equatorial Bands but that is all the detail I could make out. I saw one moon of Saturn and could see where the rings were behind the planet but was not able to see the Cassini Division. We used the scope's setting circles to get in the neighborhood of comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) but it looked to me like the scope was pointing just a little bit high and could not be lowered because it was on a roughly aligned equatorial mount. The clock drive on the scope did a good job of keeping objects in the field of view considering the minimal effort invested in its alignment.