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

Chris, I think you should get a chance at Steve Coe's Heck With The Monsoon Party and give us all some hints and pointers on how to manage decision on going or not going observing.
Thanks for your report and I don't think you should be the last for a report. 

Clear skies,
aj
----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Hanrahan" <chris.hanrahan@xxxxxxx> 
To: "sac-forum: freelists.org" <sac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 1:10 PM
Subject: [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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