Shadow transit, decent seeing at last.

Oh brother. It has been some kind of astronomically challenging spring
here in lovely Marin County, California. If it ain't the clouds and
rain, it's the seeing. Or the wind. Or a combination of the three. We
have taken to ordering CNC machined umbrella holders for our large dob
secondary cages. Red anodized, 49.95 from W Precision Machining in San
Rafael. I dunno about the price, actually, but Mark Mickels (pronounced
MY-Kels) could certainly generate some fine ones if called upon. He got
a ribbon for a CNC machined Dob (John L would be spinnin' in his grave
over that concept, 'cept he ain't dead) at RTMC last year. His first
scope and he wins a prize at RTMC (we still call it that around here).

And COLD!! Lawdy. Last night it got down to 49. Brrrr. But today-- it
was different. Blue sky. Quite a few big fat ravens loafing idly
downslope, croaking, rolling inverted, croaking again, then rolling back
upright. Why do they do that? What possible reason could a bird with a
brain the size of a peanut have for inverted flight? But they DO, damn
them, and they make it look so delightfully wonderful. If they were
really smart thought, they wouldn't be eating out of the dumpster behind
the KFC on Miller Avenue. Uh-uh. Heart attack on a plate. But I digress.

ClearSky Klok sez average to below average seeing, ok transparency and
no cloud cover tonight (Sunday, May 1st). So, having spent the day
making a ramp to load the 18" into the tiny white pickup, I am eager to
try it out. (Ramp formula: 2-6' lengths of aluminum 2x2x1/8" angle,
1-28x72" piece of lay-about 3/4" plywood. 10 T-nuts, 10 1/4-20 bolts.
Bolt the angle along the long sides of the plywood. Instant scope
loading ramp which will be light, strong and fit IN the bed of a nissan
or toyota standard light pickup). But I digress...

So out I go, happy that I didn't have to break my scope down to pack it
into the truck. Wheelbarrow handles and 8" wheels got the job done. No
more separate mirror box (killed my back). It all goes in one shot.

Down the ramp and onto the lofty observing spot, elevation 1000', a 60
mile distant horizon to the south. Stick the poles in, snap on the
secondary, Howie Glater the sucker carefully (it held collimation!) and
drop in an eyepiece.

WOW. A shadow transit on Jupiter! At 60X it's a tiny inky-black dot on
the Northern Band. Three moons visible. Io must be down in front. Is
that Io's shadow? It's 9pm PDT. -7 hours GMT. Some visitors come by for
a look at Jupiter. They've never seen it in a big scope before. It
floors them. You can see some nice detail. We crank up the power to
say, 120X. Looking good still. Crank it up some more. Now we're at
290X (7mm Nagler, Paracorr). That's the limit of seeing tonight. A
bulge is beginning to appear on the East limb. Io creeping out (from in
front or behind, I don't know). At least the moons are discs and not
wavy, sparkly, distorted globs. The seeing is pretty good. The planet
is so bright, I wonder if I could see more with a polarizing filter.
Gotta try that.

Saturn is heading for the western horizon. We take a look at 120X. My
visitors have never seen Saturn through a telescope. It's looking razor
sharp. Cassini, Enke. I show them how to point the scope with the telrad
and let them find it. The first one says "Oh My God", in a moment of
religious clarity. "This is unbelievable! You have to see this Peter",
he says to his companion. Uncle Bob did good. I try for a few minutes
to find the Eskimo, from memory, since I didn't bring any charts. It's
supposed to be near Saturn, in Gemini. I can't find it, which is too
bad, because it's so colorful.
One of the visitors tells me he's started a school in town, and wonders
if I'd like to show the 6th grade class some astronomical sights as part
of their astronomy cirriculum. I figure any school that has astronomy
on the menu in 6th grade is alright with me, so he's gonna hook me up
with the teacher, and I'll drag some folks from the club into the
process and we'll do some observing with the kids.

Now, seeing wasn't all that great, but it better than Friday. On
Friday, I set up and took a peek at Saturn, and it was like Galileo
described, a disc with ears! I had never seen the gap between the rings
and the planet closed up by bad seeing before, but there is was. So
that was my weekend observing.
How was yours?

Uncle Bob

sharp. Cassini, Enke. I show them how to point the scope with the telrad
and let them find it. The first one says "Oh My God", in a moment of
religious clarity. "This is unbelievable! You have to see this Peter",

I have found that you never know what apects (if any) of observing will turn
folks on. However, some generalizations:

1) Women like to look through scopes, while men like to look at the scopes.
2) Women want to know how to find stuff themselves (e.g. "How did you find
that? Show me how I can find it!"), while men get excited by GOTO.
3) Women want to talk about the big picture - constellations, Milky Way,
cosmology, while the men want to talk about technical scope stuff.

These are, of course, gross generalizations, and maybe only indicate that I
just like women more? In any case, my sons and I really enjoy observing
with folks outside our club, and regularly recall some great moments. One
example that we talk about is showing a guy M31 in 11x80 binos at a very
dark sight. The guy looks into the binos and says "Holy ****!"

Dennis