[AZ-Observing] Re: [sac-forum] July 28 from Cave Creek

15480 Empire Rd.
Benson, AZ 85602
hm ph: 520-586-2244

From mid-June to about mid-Aug, as the locals know, is monsoon (rainy) season 
in Arizona. It seems like the skies never truly clear during that time and when 
it does you hope that you can take advantage of it. 

Last night was one of those rare, clear, fairly dry nights when I could 
actually go outside from about 10pm until about midnight looking at objects 
through my telescope. It was a pleasant, almost cool, night. It was good to use 
the telescope again. I was certainly feeling photon-deprived! 

I just set up my 13-inch Dob in my black back yard and simply scanned around 
the sky for whatever happened to enter the eyepiece. The Milky Way was 
brilliant, but as usual, I shied away from it in search of external galaxies, 
though I did check out the Sagittarius star cloud around the spout of the 
teapot for quite awhile. I checked out old friends M51 and M101 (no, I did not 
see either one naked eye!) and their local environs and actually saw some good 
details in their spiral arms while there I examined several of the small 
galaxies in their vicinity. Later I scanned around the NGC7331 and Stephan's 
Quintet area and saw M31 for the first time this summer. I checked Albireo with 
a pair of hand-held 8x50 binoculars and easily split the star, black space 
between the components. 

Anyway a pleasant summer night to relax after the hectic activities of the day!

Clear skies, 
Wayne (aka Mr. Galaxy)
p.s. And no, Steve, no problems finding M2. I use the ancient method of 
star-hopping!



-- Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Morning of 29 July from West Side of Phoenix

While I went to bed early on Monday, I was up at 3:30 AM today 
observing. The sky was the best I have seen it in a long time. The 
waning Moon was low to the East with lots of Earth shine. The 
temperature in the observatory was a very comfortable 82. Observing 
went well.

It is a real joy to observe early morning like that. No planes or 
other actively. The world is asleep. One gets the feeling of being 
alone and one with the universe. Great time!

Jeff


At 00:38 -0700 07/29/2008, Richard Harshaw wrote:
Tonight (July 28) was awesome from Cave Creek.  Although not as good 
as Cherry Road or the Antennas (of course!), the Milky Way and Great 
Rift were easy to trace, and I was observing 13mag galaxies from 9:30 
pm to 12:30 am.  Hope some of y'all got out and enjoyed this great 
sky.  Supposed to be this good Tuesday night too.

Richard Harshaw

Cave Creek, AZ

-- 
Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
Counting Photons
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
7812 West Clayton Drive
Phoenix, Arizona 85033-2439 U.S.A.
(623)849-5889
(623) 247-1190 (Fax)
www.hposoft.com
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