[sac-forum] Observing report - Cherry Rd - 07/14/07...

I'm probably the last guy who should be providing an observing report as my 
Midwestern-standards make lousy Arizona skies seem spectacular.  As I was 
probably the only one who ventured north to Cherry last night, I guess I should 
post something.
I arrived later that I usually care to – sometime between 7 and 7:30.  Honestly 
I wasn’t paying too much attention to the time as I was constantly 
rubber-necking at the sky on my drive north.  It didn’t look good.  Someone 
reported on the sac-forum that there were dark rain clouds to the north and 
indeed there were.  There was a great looking cumulonimbus cloud to the 
northeast that, as darkness began to fall, produced some nice lightning.
What peaked my curiosity once I arrived at Cherry was the clear skies overhead. 
 I just hoped it would hold out for me.  After all, I’m from the upper Midwest 
where you plan your observing sessions around partly cloudy nights.
Long story short, by around 8:30pm I knew that Andrew and his geocaching crew 
were not going to stop back at Cherry for any observing and the ominous clouds 
to the north and east seemed to dissipate more and more.
Different parts of the sky were lousy over different time throughout the 
evening.  The northern sky stayed relatively cloud free.  The eastern sky had 
persistent lightning flashes most of the time I was there.  The southern Milky 
Way came and went.  Southwest was junk about 90% of the time.  I’m no expert at 
assessing seeing conditions but I rated it about a 6 of 10 (on the Midwestern 
scale, of course).
Early on in the evening I hit mostly showpiece objects as I waited for 
astronomical twilight.  Once it got fairly dark I just jumped around to the 
better looking areas of the sky going after whatever caught my fance.  The view 
of the night was probably 75x with my 12” dob on NGC 5908 and NGC 5905 in 
Draco.  That whole 3.5 degree area (including 5907, 5879 and 5866) is one of my 
favorite star-hopping stops.  I managed to focus a little and pound out 11 
Herschel objects in a few hours.  Most of them were O.C.s in Vulpecula and 
Cygnus.  My last observation was at 11:30pm.  By 12am I was locking the gate 
behind me and heading home.
Anything was better than nothing.  Let’s hope for some kind of monsoon miracle 
for August 11. 
Chris Hanrahan

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