11/03/2007, Gayle H. Riggsbee Observatory
Friday night/Saturday morning would be my first chance to spend some time under clear skies at the GHRO. I arrived around 5:30 pm, and found two other members already setting up on the pads. Conditions promised to be good with clear skies, although a bit windy and cold. The three of us stood around and talked for a bit, waiting for the sun to go down.
Shortly after sunset, the first stars appeared, and not long after, Jupiter, closely chasing the sun over the horizon. I took the opportunity to point the 24" reflector towards the planet, and while it was too low for a good view of the surface, the rings were detectable, and four moons were easily seen.
Throughout the night we viewed a variety of objects, Holmes 17/P being the primary target. It was my first time seeing the comet that everyone was ranting about, and it did not dissapoint. The view in the 24" reflector was amazing, at around 120x it exceeded the eyepiece FOV and reminded me of a transparant moon. At around 75x it was best, with four stars behind the cloud visible through the haze. The nucleus was a slightly defined ball off center, lighter in tint than the cloud. Overall it had an aqua green tinge to my eye. The cloud was tremendous, much larger than I could have expected.
I also had a look at Mars around 1am, still too low for high magnification however. It was more yellow than I expected, and had a shade similar to a red luna.
A lot of meteor activity, I counted at least a dozen that were bright enough to catch my eye when looking elsewhere. I saw one particularly spectacular meteor on the way home around 2:30am, it streaked downward nearly vertical directly in front of me, and appeared to end on the straight highway I was on. It travelled a good 10ยบ with a strobing white and blue pattern.. really amazing.
Some of the objects that I recorded:
Albiero
M27 - only a slight fuzzy patch, but the shape was recognizable.
M42 - the last object I viewed, I stayed to see this for the first time. Just as amazing as I'd heard it would be.
M15 - A really great view, I was able to sit for an unknown time and just stare into this.
IC 2118 - I -think- I saw a slight outline, but that may have been my brain putting in the image that I expected to see. The background was not black enough to really make a good definition.
NGC 6826 - I had seen this before through a smaller scope, and saw the dissapearing act when looking directly at the center. It didn't seem to work with the larger scope, not sure if that was due to the conditions or the light gathering of the bucket.
Perseus double cluster - another that I was able to stare at for some time, very impressive display.
-Chris Miller
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