18 November 2005

Observing Location	PSC
Observational Period	1435-1450 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Cold, breezy and absolutely clear. No boiling. Transparency Excellent Seeing Excellent
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binocular - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Today might be a day when I should have stayed in bed, or at least shouldn’t touch anything else made of plastic.

Yesterday I got a pen that has a blue LED in it that illuminates the tip when it is turned on so you can write in the dark. It looked like it would be good for making field notes at night so I put it in my pocket to try out tonight. When I got all set up to observe the sun I promptly dropped it and the plastic around the point shattered so there isn’t enough support for the point to write with it. I looked for the missing piece of plastic but couldn’t find it so won’t be able to make a repair.

After observing I went to the library to pick up an item they had on hold for me. While browsing the videos and books I tucked my solar filter into my armpit since I didn’t have my backpack and had to hold my tripod while keeping one hand free to move videos around. When I got to checkout I forgot it was there and unclamped my upper arm. The filter went crashing to the floor and apparently hit on one corner. It previously had an unprepaired crack on one corner of the back piece of plastic but now there is also one on the other corner and one on the front piece of plastic as well. I thought the repair would be simple but it took a lot more fussing than I had anticipated and I am not certain that it will last. I will have to be careful about how much strain I put on the filter with the cords that attach it to the binocular so I don’t crack it again.

Target	Sunspots
Constellation	Lib
Category	Solar
Time	18Nov05; 1435 EST
Comments	This sunspot group is huge. I am estimating that it spans about 1/8th the diameter of the disc of the sun. 822 SE quadrant. The P spot is large itself and is surrounded by a penumbra. It is trailed by a bunch of smaller spots until the final large F spot which is not well consolidated and does not have a penumbra.   Groups Spots R Northern Hemisphere 0 0 0 Southern Hemisphere 1 8 18 Total 1 8 18 NOAA Boulder Sunspot Number 62 R = 10 * Groups + Spots

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The item I had on hold at the library was the Wallace and Gromit short film A Grand Day Out. It is about Wallace and Gromit going on holiday. Since Wallace loves cheese and there is none in the house they decide to go to the moon since “everyone knows the Moon is made of cheese.” It is amazing what can be done with a little clay, some imagination, and a lot of patience and time.

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Observing Location	Columbia University, New York, NY
Observational Period	2000-2100 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	It was supposed to have been a good night tonight but I thought the sky looked a little milky. That may have because I was in the done and only seeing a small sliver of sky that was right above the rising moon. Transparency Good Seeing Good
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binocular - Charlie 14” SCT - Columbia
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Tom Clabough public observing session

Tonight was the first public observing session that Columbia has been able to hold for a long while because of the weather. And they only lucked out tonight. As we were leaving the roof the clouds were starting to move in from NJ. By the time I got downstairs and outside it was pretty much totally overcast.

Target	M45, The Pleiades
Constellation	Tau
Category	Deep Sky Object
Time	18Nov05; 2030 EST
Comments	The Pleiades is not a high magnification object but that is what they were using on it. Out of all the stars in that area of the sky we got a view of one of them.

Target	Double Cluster, NGV869/NGC884
Constellation	Cam
Category	Deep Sky Object
Time	18Nov05; 2045 EST
Comments	The Double Cluster is not a high magnification object either. They had the GoTo find it and there was a group of stars there that might have been NGC884 although they had sent the scope to NGC869. It didn’t look rich enough to be 869 but yet it didn’t look circular enough to be 884.

On first getting into the dome I couldn't see anything but the slit. After a short while my eyes dark adapted enough that I could walk around without using my hands to keep from bumping into things or people. I moved in front of the slit after I had had my turn at the eyepiece and thought there was a flood light on an adjaccent building pointed at us. It turns out the flood light was the moon.

The clock drive on the scope they were using inside the dome was working which was a plus. The big scope still doesn’t work though.

They had performed a rough three star alignment on the scope and were using it in GoTo mode. That is good when you have a line of people and need to get from target to target quickly. But the scope got kicked and moved out of alignment and they were lost them. There were no reference materials around to suggest targets or to help them to star hop to them and they didn’t know the sky either. If someone gave them an object number they could punch it into the scope and tell it to go there. They also didn’t know what the magnification of the finder scope was or what eyepieces they were using to calculate the magnification we were using. Given the magnification they were using I think they should have been looking at double stars or small faint fuzzies.

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Observing Location	TotL I had the park all to myself tonight.
Observational Period	2145-2245 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	When I got on the bus at Columbia it was totally overcast but I figured I would walk through the park and see if anyone else had gone out and was still there. On arriving in the park it was completely overcast everywhere but to the south. The moon was shining through the clouds and provided a very comfortable view. There was a rainbow around the moon that changed color with the thickness of the clouds. At times it was green in the center and at other times it was blue. The outside ranged from ruddy to dark pink. Mars burned through the clouds until they began to thicken at about 2230. It was cool but the air was still. Transparency Nil Seeing Good
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binocular - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Moon
Constellation	Aur
Category	Lunar
Time	18Nov05; 2145 EST
Comments	The terminator was passing just outside of Cleomedes and down through the center of Mare Crisium. I think I was seeing Schumburger and Boguslawsky near the terminator on the southern limb. Copernicus and Tycho looked very flat, like stains on the surface. The rays were still easy to see around Tycho through the thinner clouds but became less distinct as the brightness was attenuated by thicker cloud cover. Most of Clemonides was in shadow. The shadow on the inside of the eastern rim wall was very dark. The western rim wall was catching sunlight and shining white against the black of the terminator.