FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: Cherry Rd Report - not good

["Bill VanOrden" <beevo1@xxxxxxx>]

Ken Sikes, his son Kyle and I headed out to Flatiron for a shot at the
skies.  The main mass of clouds stayed along the eastern portion of the sky
not advancing much over time until around 10pm, then they moved in to cover
the eastern 1/3 of the sky, with and advance wave of soggy air ahead of them
that affected the Milky Way.  Sagittarius never really came out of the mush
at all, but for most of the night Lyra was in very steady air.  Ditto with
the tail of Scorpius.  Jupiter was in very good air for most of the night.
Temps at sunset were tolerable in the shade of some Palo Verde near where we
set up.  We did not drive back in as far as everyone seems to.  We had a
small stand of trees between us and the bulk of the Aurora Bora Phoenix,
setting up on a nice smooth area of dirt.

We were rewarded for our efforts with some incredibly good views of Jupiter.
Special treat was the transit of Europa!  The shadow and the body of the
moon was extremely easy to view.  The "action" of the moon leaving the face
of Jupiter was fun to watch and the seeing had to have been at least a 9,
possibly 9.5.  SQM readings varied between 19.88 and 21.20 in the unclouded
portion of the sky until everything got "soggy" around 11:30 or so and I
quite taking readings.  The bugs came back with the wave of humidity at that
time also.

Several large meteor trails were seen by everyone but myself, I was turned
the wrong way EVERY SINGLE TIME!!

M13 and NGC 6207 were nicely framed in my 10" SCT with a 35mm PanOptic.

All in all, despite the short night, it was well worth the effort to run out
there in the face of the clouds.

Beevo


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