[AZ-Observing] Saturday night at Saddle Mt.

Howdy all;

We had six vehicles and plenty of warmly dressed observers last night.  The
clouds kind of came and went and it certainly was chilly, but a good time
was had by all.

Comet Holmes is much dimmer than before, I would guess about 4.5 magnitude.
It is larger and lower surface brightness.  I can still see it with just
naked eyes, but it is fainter than the Double Cluster and somewhat larger.
Naked eye I say it is about the same brightness as the Andromeda Galaxy.

Using the ED80 refractor and a 27mm Panoptic eyepiece gives a nice view.
The comet takes up about 60% of the field of view and the central elongated
bright section is still pretty easy to see.

It took a while to find Comet Tuttle, but once we did it is also nicely
displayed in the 80mm RFT.  This comet is round with a bright core.  Averted
vision makes it much larger in size.  In my widest eyepiece, a 35mm
Panoptic, Comet Tuttle and M 33 are at the opposite edges of the field of
view.  They look rather similar.

By the time the moon was about to come up were all in the vehicles with the
heater on, my car's display said "37 F" once I was ready to go.  

A big thanks to all that joined in;
Steve Coe



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