[sac-forum] Cherry Road 9/11/10
- From: "Richard Harshaw" <rharshaw2@xxxxxxx>
- To: <sac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:18:51 -0700
Last night, Steve and Rosie Dodder, Paul Lind, Darrell Spencer, Jimmy Ray
and I spent the night at Cherry Road. It was a mixed bag.
As the sun drew near the horizon, fingers of high, wispy clouds kept rolling
by with tempting pieces of sky as blue as the pants of a Dutchman. After
sunset, this pattern continued, with seeing about as bad as it gets in
Arizona and transparency ranging from 0 to 7, depending on what part of the
sky you were working in.
From about 8:00 pm to 1:00 am, we kept up a lively game of "chase the holes"
and had overall decent results, the seeing settling down to about a 5 or 6
out of 10 and transparency hitting maybe 8 in some pockets. (Jimmy spent
most of his night trying to find Archinal 1.). We knocked off about 1:00 am
and all hit the sack as the sky was getting pretty crummy by then.
Paul Lind suggested that these high clouds were forming and dissolving in
place, not blowing in from the south, and I tend to agree with that. If you
look at the weather data last night, there was high humidity way aloft and
if the air temperature at 30,000 feet or so was within a degree or two of
the dew point, clouds could form pretty fast as the moisture condensed and
radiated its heat of vaporization into the night sky, and then clear out if
a wave of warmer air blew by.
About 2:00 am I got up to check the sky and found it mostly clear and
crystalline. I woke up the team and by time most were out and ready to go
again, the cat-and-mouse cloud game returned. All but Darrell and I stayed
up-we ran until 4:00 am, chasing holes in a surprisingly good NE sky-and
bagged quite a few elusive targets.
For an astronomy night, it was a dismal event. But for the friendship,
jokes, and good fellowship, it was a 10 all the way around!
Richard Harshaw
Cave Creek, Arizona
Brilliant Sky Observatory
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