[AZ-Observing] Cherry Rd - last night!!!


Yesterday evening at Cherry Rd found a turnout of 22 vehicles and 30 or
so folks, a veritable turn out, with all looking forward to a well
deserved clear, dry evening of observing.  And what an evening it was! 
I rated the evening as 8/10 for seeing and 9/10 for transparency.  Not
only a great night for my 14 inch telescope but great for any telescope!

It's very difficult to give a report for everyone, so here is mine and
no doubt others will follow.

I started with the obligatory view of Mars, M13 and M92 these latter two
objects viewed at 200X - a testament to things to come.  Then I quickly
jumped over to Libra finding some faint fuzzies covered in the Fuzzy
Spot article from the SAC Newsletter.

During breaks from viewing in my scope I caught some memorable
observations in a number of other.  For instance, in Rick Rotramel's 16
inch several of us saw the trio in Draco; yes the trio in Draco not the
trio in Leo.  These galaxies were highlighted in the Astronomy Picture
of the Day web site and can be seen at
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010608.html.  A number of us saw the
Veil Nebula and Coma Galaxy Cluster in Paul Lind's 14 inch telescope. 
Thad was justifiable proud of showing me the North American Nebula in
the finder for his 8 inch as was Rick Tejera of showing the Whirlpool in
his 8 inch.  Several of us saw a couple of galaxies in Tom Polakis' 20
inch.  There were a number of other observations in other peoples'
telescopes.

The only problem encountered was early on someone left without the
obligatory warning of white lights.

After completing Libra I got side tracked with checking out some Messier
objects in my telescope.  I didn't intend to get caught up in this, but
after the earlier views of M13 and M92 I couldn't resist.  So I tried -
and got hooked!  First was the Trifid, filling the entire field of view
at 300X.  Next came the Swan and Lagoon.  In all of these views the UHC
and OIII filters made these spectacular views much more memorable.  I
went on to M4, M71 and M11 amongst others.

Only reason 300X was used is, that was the most I could get out of the
telescope and that because Steve Coe lent me his 2 inch barlow - -
several months ago.

I completed observing with another 300X view, this time of the Ring
Nebula at the zenith.  OH WOW!  There were a number of brighter areas
around the torus which the UHC and OIII filters greatly enhanced.

Next came M56; the Sky Commander gave the coordinates to move the
telescope as 80 deg in azimuth and 0.5 deg in altitude.  Being
uninitiated in moving a DOB at the zenith and being just about exhaused
from the long night of viewing I was unable to locate the globular.  So
I shut everything down and slept for about three hours.

This is the kind of observing session to remember for a long time.

aj
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