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Nighttime Observing at Riverbend Park
February 2, 2008
Jay Albert
We had a good observing session at River Bend Park last night, despite the less than ideal conditions, including haze and patchy clouds. We had 11 telescopes set up on the observing field. Gary Wasserstein had the largest with his 18" Obsession dobsonian. We had some visitors to the observing field as well as park staff. We were all doing visual observations, although Bob Guzauskas did manage to image Saturn on his Celestron NexStar 6. I made a Mars observation and drawings, then switched to deep sky objects. Due to the haze, galaxies didn't show up too well. M81 and M82 looked a bit washed out and fainter galaxies weren't visible. It was a good night for brighter objects, however. Jim Kimball had a great view of the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini and Gary showed M42 to our visitors. I concentrated on open clusters and showed several to those attending. I also had a good view of the small, faint globular cluster M79 in Lepus. I was able to resolve some of the stars at 311x. Saturn got high enough to be worth a look by about 10pm. A thick blanket of clouds rolled in as I was looking at Saturn and I shut down at 10:15. Seven of us went to Applebee's for dessert after the session.
Thanks again to Larry Schlaefer for directing newcomers at the park gate. The next scheduled River Bend session is Saturday, March 1st.
Regards,
Jay
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