20 July 2006

Observing Location	CSP
Observational Period	0200-0530 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	The last observed conditions I saw said it was mild and clear at Central Park and the forecast was calling for it to be mostly clear until daybreak then to become foggy for a while. Thunderstorms are forecast for tonight. It is cool and very humid with a stiff breeze. The metal parts on my scope have cooled down to 65&def;F but the primary mirror is still at 74°F. Central Park Hour Temp °F Wind MPH / Dir / Gust Sky Vis mi 0151 EDT 73 6 / Var / -- Broken 10 0251 EDT 73 9 / NE / -- Overcast 10 0351 EDT 72 8 / NE / -- Scattered 10 0451 EDT 72 9 / NE / -- Overcast 10 0551 EDT 72 9 / NE / -- Overcast 10 La Guardia Airport Hour Temp °F Wind MPH / Dir / Gust Sky Vis mi 0151 EDT 74 9 / E / -- Scattered Broken 10 0251 EDT 73 9 / E / -- Overcast 10 0351 EDT 73 9 / NE / -- Scattered Scattered Overcast 10 0451 EDT 73 16 / NE / -- Overcast 10 0551 EDT 73 15 / NE / -- Mostly Cloudy 10 I think the sky is completely overcast with low clouds. There were some small dark patches but I couldn't tell if I am looking through gaps in the cloud to sky or more clouds above or at a dark patch of cloud rather than a gap. I suspected it is the latter but later I saw the Moon in those dark placdes. Transparency Poor Seeing Excellent
Instruments	SAR: Coulter CT-100 -Charlie Canon 15x50 IS binocular w/AstroSolar filter film- Charlie Grundig YB400 short wave radio - Charlie Miscellaneous recording devices - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Occultation of M45 by the Moon
Constellation	Tau
Category	Occultation, Lunar
Time	20060720.0252- EDT
Comments	The occultations began on the bright limb at 0252 EDT with stars reappearing from behind the dark limb. The occultations continued until after sunrise. Many events were not visible in the glare from the 24% illuminated, 24d14+h, waning gibbous Moon. Dummy me forgot to bring my camera. Not that it made that much difference, as it turns out, since I rarely saw the Moon. But it looked good when I did see it. I kept receiving alarms from my PDA telling me this star or that one was about to disappear or reappear but mostly all I could see was clouds. I had all the wires to inject the signal into the MiniDisk along with my voice from a microphone, but whenever I plugged the cable into the splitter that directed time signals to an external speaker and to the mixer it cut the short wave signal out. I haven't had this problem before so fell back to just using the Olympus digital recorder which is generally good at picking up the time signals as well as my voice. The wind and the static on the radio made the digital recording difficult to interpret. For the most part I parroted the time each minute and the minute toned cut through the wind although it had trouble with the voice, as did I. The short wave signal got really bad several times and I had trouble understanding the minute announcements for a long stretch of time. ~0840:02 UTC Merope Reappearance The recorder wasn’t running so I lost the time stamp. I just got back to the eyepiece in time to see it pop out from behind the dark limb. 0819 UTC There are two stars off the dark limb, a bright one and a dim one (Alycone and ?TYC1800-02201-1?) 0857:16.69 UTC Atlas Reappearance 0901:11.15 UTC HIP17862 Reappearance

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Observing Location	MetOval
Observational Period	2150-2220 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Warm and very humid. No breeze at all. Transparency Good Seeing
Instruments	Naked-Eye Observing - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target	Iridium 72 Flare
Constellation	Cyg
Category	Satellite
Time	2006.0720.2209 EDT
Comments	This Mag -2 flare started low in Cyg beneath Deneb and moved up toward Alberio. It became very bright and was fairly persistent. At the same tile a much fainter satellite appeared above and behind the Iridium and crossed its track behind the iridium traveling more horizontally. This was an easy naked eye object so was probably around Mag 3. I checked Heavens above and all the satellites they list in that timeframe are moving S to N. I don't see anything listed that might have been this satellite, I will have to check CalSky when I get home and see if it sheds any light. I remembered that I had recently installed a demo version of PocketSat+ on my PDA and ran it to see what it would say. It doesn't give magnitude estimates. It didn’t do any better identifying my unanticipated bird but the program has some nice features like the satellite's footprint and a real-time radar plot of its position. Unfortunately some of the buttons are to close to the bottom edge of my screen for me to be able to press them with my degraded touch screen. I can't exit some screens back to the menu and have to exit the program and restart it. I checked Orbitron and wasn’t able to identify any satellites that fit the bill. CalSky says that Cosmos 1271 began a visible pass in the N at 2103 EDT; reached its zenith in Cyg at Mag 3.9 at 2108 EDT; then crossed the right wing of the swan and passed close to Alberio before disappearing in the SSE at 2112 EDT.