[AZ-Observing] Weekend Observing

Like some others I got some good observing in Friday night. Also some 
strange things. While the sky looked great here in Phoenix Friday 
night and my UBV photometry was excellent, the infrared photometry 
(JH bands) was horrible. It was worse directly overhead, where it 
should be best. It was almost as if a bubble of pollution hovered 
near the zenith. I tried measuring extinction in the JH bands and got 
an inverse extinction. The more air mass (further from the zenith) 
the higher the net star readings. This has happened several times 
before. Very strange.

Early Sunday morning I headed out to Rainbow Valley (Southwest of 
Phoenix) to watch the rocket launches. Very interesting. The 
Hillbilly Rocketry group of Phoenix launched there big Gila Monster 
rocket (21 feet high and 16" diameter. An excellent launch and 
recovery. Many other launches were made of other rockets of all sizes.
See http://ahpra.org/local_launch.html

What struck me was the area where the event was held would be great 
for a close dark sky site too. It's less than 30 minutes west of me.

Jeff
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Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
7812 West Clayton Drive
Phoenix, Arizona 85033-2439 U.S.A.
www.hposoft.com
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