13 December 2005

Observing Location	TotL
Observational Period	2000-0100 EST
Atmospheric Conditions	Baby, It's Cold Outside by F. Loesser I really can't stay    (but, baby, it's cold outside). I've got to go 'way    (but, baby, it's cold outside). This evening has been    (Been hoping that you'd drop in) so very nice    (I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice). My mother will start to worry    (beautiful words you're humming), and father will be pacing the floor    (listen to the fireplace roar). So really I'd better scurry    (beautiful, please don't hurry) well, maybe just a half a drink more    (put some records on while I pour). The neighbors might think    (but, baby, it's bad out there) say, what's in this drink?    (no cabs to be had out there). I wish I knew how    (your eyes are like starlight now) to break the spell    (I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell). I ought to say no, no, no sir    (mind if I move in closer?). At least I'm gonna say that I tried    (what's the sense of hurtin' my pride?). I really can't stay    (Oh, baby, don't hold out). Ah but it's cold outside    (baby, it's cold outside). I simply must go    (but, baby, it's cold outside). The answer is no    (but, baby, it's cold outside). The welcome has been    (how lucky that you dropped in) so nice and warm    (look out that window at that storm). My sister will be suspicious    (Gosh, your lips look delicious), my brother will be there at the door    (waves upon a tropical shore). My maiden aunt's mind is vicious    (gosh, your lips are delicious). Well, maybe just a cigarette more    (never such a blizzard before). I got to get home    (but, baby, you'd freeze out there). Say, lend me a coat    (it's up to your knees out there). You've really been grand    (I'm thrilled when you touch my hand). Why don't you see    (how can you do this thing to me?). There's bound to be talk tomorrow    (think of my lifelong sorrow), at least there will be plenty implied    (if you caught pneumonia and died). I really can't stay    (get over that hold-out). Ah, but it's cold outside    (ah, but it's cold outside) Where could you be going, when the wind is blowing, and it's cold outside? Baby it's cold, cold outside. It was a cold night but probably not as cold as had been forecast due to there being less wind than forecast. CSC predicted that it would be pretty clear but that seeing wouldn’t be great, probably due to wind. My feet froze again. Tonight I was wearing wool socks and my insulated boots. I may have to spring for the battery-powered, heated socks. Clear Sky Clock graphic NOAA was predicting wind chill values of 5°F. NOAA graphic Again tonight I found that it was windier outside the park than in. This is probably due to buildings channeling the wind out on the streets while the trees break it up and bend with it absorbing some of its energy. There were some high cirrus clouds that were making a halo around the moon and we had some trouble with boiling when we first started observing the moon but that disappeared as it moved higher and farther west. Time EST Temperature °F Wind MPH Gusts MPH Wind Chill °F 1951 20 7 -- 12 2051 20 9 -- 13 2151 20 6 -- 13 2251 19 7 -- 9 2351 19 6 -- 12 0051 17 8 16 -10 And it isn't even winter yet! Transparency Good Seeing Good
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binocular - Charlie Tacahashi 102 - Peter Pentax 20x60 PCF WPII binocular - Kin
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Peter Tagatac Kin Lee

Target	Sunspots
Constellation	Oph
Category	Solar
Time
Comments	I am not getting near the amount of solar observing in that I had been. It is harder to make it out in time to catch the sun now that it is setting earlier in the day.

Naked-eye Limiting Magnitude Observations	N E Zenith W S Star Magnitude κ Lep 4.36 γ Lep 4.29 μ Lep 3.29 Arneb α Lep 2.58 ζ Lep 3.55 η Lep 3.71 θ Lep 4.67 δ Lep 3.76 γ Lep 3.59 Nihal β Lep 2.81 ε Lep 3.19 Peter and I each counted 6 Pleiades while occulting the moon and I could see five with the moon visible.

Tonight was a spectacular night for meteors and the Moon.

Between us we had no less than 11 meteor sightings. Most of them were bright Geminids. The first sighting of the evening was mine and made in roughly the same area as my sighting last night. I commented on it and Peter turned around to look where I was looking and was in time to still see the meteor with a long tail. I am estimating that the tail covered about 30° of the sky from high overhead down to the west. Later in the evening Peter saw tow simultaneous meteors in that same general area of the sky although the star field had rotated by then.

I left the house without my note pad tonight but it was too cold to be writing in it anyway. I was going to use the Planetarium logbook but my battery, which was freshly charged before leaving home, died shortly after my arrival due to the cold.

Target	Moon and the Pleiades
Constellation	Tau
Category
Time	13Dec05; 2015 EST
Comments	The Moon was close to M45 tonight but just a little too far away to get them both in the same FOV.

Target	Orion’s Belt
Constellation	Ori
Category	Stars
Time	13Dec05
Comments	I found an S of stars passing through the belt between Mintaka and Alnilam and wanted to use it to try to establish a limiting magnitude for my binocular but the battery in my Palm died before I was able to do anything. Planetarium is showing many more stars than I am seeing and I am going to have to play with the limiting magnitude it displays to reduce the number of stars to what I see so I can figure out which stars they are.

Target	Moon
Constellation	Tau
Category	Lunar
Time	13Dec05
Comments	I spent most of the night observing the Moon with Peter. The seeing was stable enough that he was able to use 160x and we got some nice views of the limb and terminator. We spent a lot of time with a crater near the limb at the south pole. Unfortunately the Lunar Chart doesn’t have any limb maps and the image in Virtual Moon Atlas is so blurred that that it is unusable so I haven’t figured out which crater it was. I will have to go to paper sources unless Peter identifies it before I get to that. The two diagrams below are drawn from memory and represent an early and a late night view of the same feature. These sketchs were done at home from memory. [Peter has IDed the objects we observed (see comment for his email) and I have gone through my books and Moon maps to find the best representations of them I can. The crater we spent most of out time on was Bailly which is just west of the south pole. My first stop was back at Virtual Moon Atlas where I grabbed an image of the limg centered on Bailly Virtual Moon Atlas graphic and found a photograph of the crater taken on the Clementine mission NASA graphic and another from the Digital Atlas of the Moon Digital Atlas of the Moon graphic I checked Exploring the Moon (Cherrington) and Moon Observers Guide (Firefly) and didn't see any pictures of the area in either of them and the pictures on the Lunar Navigator Interactive Maps of the Moon web page weren't much. Then I looked at a Patrick Moore map that came with the first issue of the BBC magazine Sky at Night. It shows the craters but there isn't a lot of detail. The image is mirror reversed. Sky at Night graphic My last stop was the Map of the Moon by Antonin Rukl. He has the best images of anyone. This are two direct view he shows. The smaller one has the major features marked on it but the text describing it was not translated from Chechoslovakina into English. Map of the Moon graphic The largest map is a more photo-like rendering that only has the feature names and the Cartesian grid over it. Map of the Moon graphic There is also a large left-right reversed map which shows the Moon the way we saw it in the refractor with diagonal. Map of the Moon graphic] We observed a valley extending from the eastern edge of Aristarchus toward the terminator. It was narrow at first and widened as it got farther from the crater. Looking in LAC it appears to have been Vallis Shcroeter. Virtual Moon Atlas graphic Lunar Chart graphic Lunar Chart graphic I guess what we saw was not actually Vallis Schroeter but a flat area between it and a ridge above it. [Rulk has a great rendering of Vallis Schroeter. I think his direct view map is the most aesthetically pleasing. It is also the most accurate representation of what we saw in the eyepiece. Map of the Moon graphic] We also looked in the area my Mare Smythii and some of the other libration features up around Mare Crisium.

Target	Saturn
Constellation	Cnc
Category	Planet
Time	13Dec05, ~2350 EST
Comments	Although it appears in my diagram I did not detect any separation (the C ring) between the rings and the planet in front of the planet. A little bit of the planet’s shadow was seen on the rings to the left and there was a hint of the Cassini Division on the right side of the rings (Peter saw it on the back part of the rings to the left). There was also a hint of a stripe across the planet. This sketch was done at home from memory.

Target	Mars
Constellation	Ari
Category	Planet
Time	14Dec05; ~0030 EST
Comments	Mars had a ruddy tint in the lower portion and was grayish or bluish in the upper left quadrant. There was a darker vertical stripe down the middle of the disk that appeared to be a little Y shaped. This sketch was done at home from memory. [This is what I think I was looking at. Mars Previewer II graphic.

Target	γ Ari
Constellation	Ari
Category	Double Star
Time	14Dec05, ~0045 EST
Comments	Peter had mentioned early in the evening that he was interested to see if we could split this close double in my binoculars. When we looked at Mars I was reminded of this so we made it the last target for the night. It is too close for me to be able to split it although I felt like there was a faint blue fringe to the primary’s 6:00. Planetarium lists it as a Mag 4.6/4.7 double with 7.5” of separation. The closest doubles I have split so far with the binoculars are in the 10-15” range. It was easy to split in the scope and the stars were oriented more horizontally as I remember it.