Thursday night, I used my 210cm DK on my GM8 mount.  I spent some time doing a drift alignment since I plan to leave the GEM head mounted for a while.  I'm leaving a garbage can over it to protect it from the elements.  I put the controller and cabling away. So far, it has survived a 7 inch deluge with no problems.  But I'm getting away from my observing report here. We watched one of Jupiter's moons (I believe it was Ganymede) transit the giant orb.  We could actually see the moon rather than its shadow which was a first for me.  I spent the rest of the night looking at bright favorites from memory.  I did have an observing list and computer ready to record my observations but I just wanted to relax and have fun.

Seeing conditions here were excellent Friday night.  The sky was rock steady.... the sort of thing that I see only once in a couple or three years. I put my 5" refractor on Jupiter for most of Friday night jumping to globulars, open clusters, and 13th mag galaxies on my list every few minutes. The binoviewers with 15mm Panoptics spent most of the time on the scope for the Jovian world.

I copped some views through the 20 and 22 inch scopes.  It was a great night to look at the big bright stuff with big glass.  M31 and M33 showed magnificent detail in Greg's 22 incher. I enjoyed moving up the dust lanes.  The veil also showed incredible detail across the board.

Humidity was high and provided some problems for Albert and Greg with their eyepieces dewing up a bit.  It truly was a sopping wet night. They had to use a hair dryer to warm them up from time to time. I run heaters in my observatory, so I didn't have to deal with those issues. Eventually, we packed it in because everything was just getting so wet. Even my computer in the observatory which is covered was getting substantial dew on the keyboard. We observed till 1:30 AM or so.

It is important to note with both Greg's and Albert's low profile scopes and open designs that they had no dewing on their primary mirrors.  We shut down because everything else was wet. I know that there have been a number of discussions about this issue with the low profile designs, but here is a case in point... .those large mirrors don't dew up easily.

Albert and Greg bailed on Saturday morning with threats of clouds coming in on the weather reports.  We had invited neighbors to come over for viewiing and so I set up the observatory for visitors.  The neighbors called and politely told us that they couldn't make it, so I pulled out the binoviewers and watched Jupiter again for a while through the AP 130.  I've spent years chasing down faint fuzzies.... galaxies that are just on the verge of being detected.  It's really fun to watch something bright, with extraordinary colors, and has some action to it.  The night was cut short with high thin clouds but I did get a couple hours in.  And after a couple of days with no sleep, that was a mosts welcome end to a wonderful new moon weekend.

During the winter months, the constellation of Orion hangs high in the southern sky and is visible from even within most cities. Orion is rich with nebulae an they are big.  One of the most famous is the Horsehead Nebula. It lies 1500 light years away and as such is relatively close to us in astronomical terms

I took this photograph several years ago with a C14 and an SBIG 7 camera.

The Horse is a dark nebula.  There is no starlight to make it visible. Nor does it emit light.  If it were not for the massive ionized hydrogen cloud behind it which does emit light in the red spectrum, we would not see this object.  The hydrogen is ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionus. The shape of the Horsehead was first recognized on photographic plates at the Harvard College Observatory by Williamina Fleming in 1888.  Williamina's accomplishments and work were not recognize in her day.  Astronomy was only for men. Women were hired to do all the grunt work.

I believe that the Horsehead looks more like a complete horse.  Can't you see the horse's tail?

Thanks to a grateful donation from an anonymous fan, Plettstone now has an active weather station.  I've been spending the past couple of weeks improving its reporting capabilities.  We now have an active presentation right here on the Plettstone website and on Weather Underground.  Weather Underground is maintaining historical graphs and you might want to check it out at:

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KCAMARIP6

Here on the Plettstone site, just click on the weather icon or the webcam image on the right side of the home page to get to our current weather status.  Please note that the weather icon is not always correct as far as cloud status is concerned..... the cloud icon is based on regional data services.  Make sure to check out the webcam image for that particular data.

Comments are always welcome.  You can send them to litebkt at plettstone dot com.

Michelle