FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Great weekend, two nice comets, lots of Milky Way

["Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy all;
AJ Crayon and I had a terrific weekend high in the Rim country of central 
Arizona.  Both nights had steady seeing and I rated the transparency of both 
nights at 9 out of 10.  The Milky Way was wide and bright.

Comet Linear put on a nice show in the evening twilight, it still has a one and 
a half degree tail in my 8X42 binoculars and in the 4 inch RFT refractor it 
shows a pretty bright coma with a well defined core.  Averted vision makes the 
coma grow much larger in size and will stretch out the faintest part of the 
tail to 2 degrees.  I thought this comet was dead!

Comet NEAT is somewhat brighter than Linear, but it is also is in much darker 
skies.  I could hold it steady with my naked eye once it got dark.  The RFT 
refractor at 30X shows a pretty high surface brightness coma and a thin tail 
that is about one degree long.

Once the Milky Way got up we really had a ball.  I had made up a list and 
printed out some charts and we observed lots of great objects and some not so 
great, me in the Orion 4 inch f/6 refractor and AJ in his 14 inch Newtonian.  
We both commented on how we had to keep straight the image scale difference 
between the two telescopes as we observed the same object.

We spent some time on the area around the Lagoon Nebula and tried a variety of 
filters and magnifications.  There are lots of faint nebulae in that area.  I 
will haul out my notes later and make a more comprehensive post.

I finished up on the Veil with my new little RFT and I am glad that was the 
last view.  With the 22mm Panoptic and the UHC filter it is stunning.  Either 
of the bright arcs will fit easily in the field and show off lots of nice 
detail.  The faint nebula in between was pretty easy with averted vision.

Fun was had by all;
Steve Coe

Author "Deep Sky Observing--The Astronomical Tourist"
Saguaro Astronomy Club website
www.saguaroastro.org
--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please 
send personal replies to the author, not the list.