FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: Saturn was good tonight

["Albert Stiewing" <amst@xxxxxxx>]

I was out on Monday night and Saturn was very good. At 200x I had to wait to 
get steady seeing, but it was there, including good banding detail on the 
planet itself.. I would love an observatory. I had been planning one and had 
come home Monday from the building inspector. They wanted more details on 
the rolloff roof. I threw the plans away after Monday night. The new Lexus 
dealers lights went on. This new dealership, still under construction less 
than 1/4 away , lit up the NNE sky to the top of the big dipper. Despite 
proper lighting. the shear wattage just overwhelms. And all that light is 
just reflecting off the ground. Just imagine what it will be like after 
there are cars there.I can't wait for the new Cadillac dealership to open 
next door. Of course all the other dealership are already here. I now have 
overwhelming  sky glow from Polaris to just west of the southern meridian. 
Add in trees, a streetlight out front, neighbors unshielded 24 hour security 
lights, upward looking spot lights on landscaping and I think I could read 
the newspaper outback. Brian Skiff, if you made it this far, is there a easy 
method for measuring light pollution with a digital or CCD camera?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Hopkins" <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 9:11 AM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Saturn was good tonight


I agree with Steve. Last night was a great night for observing. Even
mild temperatures. I got several hours worth of UBV photometry and J
& H band photometry done. Monday night was good also. I feel bad for
those who can only observe on weekends.It seems the weekends have
been less than great recently, but many weekday nights have been
really wonderful.

While many discount observing in the Phoenix area due to the light
pollution, the merits of a backyard observatory are well worth the
effort to do just that. While many deep sky objects are not available
(at least easily) from the Phoenix area, there is still a lifetime of
wonderful objects you can observe from your backyard. Being able to
just hop out back, do your observing and then come back in for TV,
bed or whatever is really great. Driving for hours to a dark sky area
only to find poor observing conditions has got to get old fast.

Jeff

At 02:15 -0700 2/1/06, Steve Coe wrote:
>Howdy all;
>
>
>I had an hour or so of good seeing in my backyard tonight (Tues.) and 
>Saturn
>was very good around 11 PM.  I would rate the seeing at 7 out of 10 on the
>Pickering scale.  In practical terms that means that I could really use 
>200X
>or so and see lots of detail.
>
>
>
>Cassini's division was an easy black ring within the ring system and the
>crepe ring could be seen as it crossed the ball of the planet.  Four faint
>satellites were around Saturn.  The ball of the planet showed the 
>equatorial
>band as pretty dark and the polar area was about the same dark color, maybe
>medium grey.  I was able to use 200X in my "new" Nexstar 8 and Saturn was
>very stable at that power.  At 267X it was a moving around somewhat, so I
>returned to the lower power for this observation.  A nice view of one of my
>favorite objects in the sky.
>
>
>
>A quick note about an optical illusion that I have noted when the rings are
>at this angle.  I appears to me as if the small section of the ball of
>Saturn that sticks "below" the rings is all the "wrong angle".  By this I
>mean that curve of the cut off region of Saturn does not match up with the
>rest of the planet, as if there was a section shaved off the ball of 
>Saturn.
>I know its not the truth, there is not a portion of Saturn that is
>"missing", but it does look like it my eye.
>
>
>
>Clear Skies to us all;
>
>Steve Coe
>
>--
>See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please
>send personal replies to the author, not the list.

-- 
Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
7812 West Clayton Drive
Phoenix, Arizona 85033-2439 U.S.A.
www.hposoft.com
--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please
send personal replies to the author, not the list.

--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please 
send personal replies to the author, not the list.