I found a good spot on the front yard. But I noodled over my blog until less than an hour before the event was to start, then tore around wildly setting up the telescope on the tripod and wedge. I had a great deal of trouble getting the two secondary bolts in, among those that hold the telescope to the wedge. By the time I finished I had no time to get the camera going before the start of the event. Looking through the finder scope, I saw that the moon and atmosphere were bright and thought they obscured the stars even on the moon’s darker side. (Obviously I was wrong and the finder didn't give enough detail, judging from Kurt's report.) Maybe I should try for the egress, when the sky will be dark, I decided. Cory and I had supper and I went back to work. But when it was dark I thought I couldn’t photograph anything because the moon’s neighborhood seemed too washed out. I decided to relax a bit, then show the Orion Nebula to Cory and, later, take some more photos of that nebula to add to my mosaic. When I went back outside my first clue something was wrong was that my flashlight set off glitters in the grass. A heavy frost had descended from the clear sky and covered everything. My equipment bags were soggy and the telescope’s corrector plate was covered with white frost. I asked Cory if she had a hair-drier so I could get rid of the frost. She didn't. (She has no hair-drier and I have no hair.) For a time I tried to evaporate the rime with my space heater, but that only turned the frost to water. I gave up and hauled everything back inside, dragging my telescope upstairs via hand truck. Now I'll have to clean the plate because the frost left crud all over it.-- Best wishes, Joe --- On Wed, 2/4/09, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Observing report - Moon passes Pleiades To: "Utah Astronomy List Serv" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 2:33 AM Although I did not expect to be able to see the Pleiades just a few minutes after civil sunset, at 6:00pm I put a small 60mm refractor on the Moon and was rewarded with a nice view of a shadow ray in Clavius on the Moon and 5 Pleiadan stars shining from a steel blue-grey sky. Taygetae 19 Tau, Mai 20 Tau, Electra 17 Tau, a fainter Celaneo 16 Tau and the Moon were visible in a 1.2 deg TFOV. One field away, Alycone 25 Tau and Merope 23 Tau could be seen. At 6:03pm, Taygeta winked off during ingress behind the dark limb. Celaneo 20 was a lunar grazer that passed a few arc minutes below the south pole and terminator, but was never obscured. The sky color was quite pleasing and I think in the future I will look at the Moon under similar conditions instead of waiting for it to get dark. By 6:15pm, Maia 20 Tau was just beginning its own lunar south pole graze. I packed it up for while. At 6:55pm, I again set up the small refractor to watch egress of two Pleiaden stars on the bright limb. Mai 20 Tau was ending its wide-field graze-pass of the south pole. At about 7:00pm, I took a break from the eyepiece, looked up and there was a great pass by the ISS at about -2 mags from the northwest to the south east at about 35 degs alt. (Checked and it shows up on the NASA ISS Sighting Calculator. I had not thought to check for ISS overflights tonight.) A few minutes later, fainter 5.6v 18 Tau egressed on the bright limb. With 60mm of aperture, I did not see the moment of egress. It was overwhelmed by bright limb. About five minutes after egress it was sufficiently far (2 or 3 arcminutes) from the bright limb to be detected. This was a rare nice observing day for me: At 5am, I went out and took a look at Comet Lulin, a peak at Saturn and the "Y" shaped Struve 761-762 system around sigma Orion. Around 11:30am, a quick peak for small prominences off the Sun's limb with the PST. 6pm - Moon and an occulted star ingress. 7pm - Satellite overpass and an occulted star egress. I decided to pass looking for Comet Kushida in Tau. The Moon was within 20 degrees and it did not seem to be worth the trouble, but I see Patrick got an image. Overslept on the 1:22am Vandenberg launch. - Kurt Some background reading: Weaver, H.R. 1947. The Visibility of Stars without Optical Aid. (Visibility of stars near sunset.) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1947PASP...59..232W _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com