FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Saturday night at Cherry Rd.

[AJ Crayon <acrayon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This past weekend we got an unexpected break in the Arizona summer
monsoon, so several of us from the Saguaro Astronomy Club decided to
challenge the weather and head north to the foothills and partly cloudy
skies, instead of west to the desert and clear skies.

We were amply rewarded with skies that began clearing after sunset and
were good enough to observe by twilight.  We wound up with something
like 11 vehicles - if I'm to accept Steve Coe's count. ;o)  Amongst them
were Tom Polakis, Jack Jones, Jennifer Keller, Aaron McNeely, Brian
Workman and of course Steve Coe.

The first object of the evening was Mars, what else?  Although the skies
were somewhat turbulent there were moments of pretty good seeing. 
Unfortunately, because of the Martian dust storm, there wasn't much
detail to be seen.  After several minutes of observing in my 14.5 inch
telescope AT 140X and 200X only Syrtis Major was seen.  The remainder of
the planet was a uniform characteristic orangish color.  Glad we don't
have storms like this in the Arizona deserts!

Having given up on Mars, Steve Coe coerced us to have a look at Comet
2001/A2 Linear.  As it was only about 10 degrees above the horizon we
didn't expect much despite it being naked eye.  Were we ever so
surprised!  In Steve's six inch and Tom Polakis' 13 inch it had a well
defined coma and a nice tail covering several fields of view.   Much
later, and before retiring for the evening, I had another look at the
comet, this time in my telescope.  At 220X the coma appeared larger and
was better defined on the west side.  I gave a rough estimate of five
degrees for the tail.

My planned observing list wasn't completed very much as much time was
spent at others' telescopes, enjoying the gorgeous summer Milky Way or
just chatting with others.

Here's a small selection of my deep sky observations this evening.

NGC6325, a globular cluster in Ophiuchus, at 220X it is large, round and
had a chair of stars on the southwest side.

NGC 6709, an open cluster in Aquila, at 90X it is a very bright and very
large open cluster, many chains of stars radiating from the center
towards the edge of the cluster.  There is a nice blue and light yellow
double looking star involved.  Anyone know if it is in someone double
star list?  If not it should be!

NGC6751, a planetary nebula in Aquila, at 220X it is a nice round
planetary.  With the UHC it gets bigger and brighter.  There is a 10th
mag star involved but I'm not sure it is the central star.

Barnard 64, a dark nebula in Ophiuchus and near M9, at 90X it is
elongated in an easterly direction with about six stars involved.

Now if only the monsoon will continue its break for another week.

Clear skies to all,
aj
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