--- Kim Hyatt <kimharch@msn.com> wrote:

Sorry Joe, can't help. My cold kept me indoors. I hope someone took advantage of the opportunity.

The road into Gravel Quarry was clear except for a few small puddles. The night was clear and windless but the temperature fell to 14 F by 11:00pm. Early on the transparency was very good and I did a bunch of binocular Messier objects. The Comet Machholtz was visible unaided at about 5th magnitude near 53 and 54 ERI. But as the temperature fell, the pre-dewfall haze set in that cut the transparency. Dewfall itself was just frost forming, no liquid. The shower itself was sparser than the Perseids. There was no steady faint rain of dim small ones at the radiant, but there were many bright ones out 90 degrees from the radiant at a frequency of about one per minute. You had to work at seeing this shower but it was good to get out of the house for a night. I left at 11:30pm. I found that at 14F, it’s hard to stay warm enough to enjoy yourself, even with a small charcoal fire to keep your fingers and nose warm. Not being raised in Utah, this was new for me, and a represents a personal best for low temperature star gazing even if it was only binoculars. On Saturday night after the feast, Bob Taylor and Kevin Scott and I were starving for ancient photons so we drove out to Lakeside. It was 31F and foggy so we drove up on a ridge in the Grassy Mountains where it was 43F and clear. Bob pulled the Horse Head Nebula out of IC434 with his 16 inch dobsonian, at about 11 pm when it was still clear. Later the transparency fell as dewfall approached. We packed up at about 2am when the radiant for the Geminids was directly overhead. There rate was about 1 nice one per minute and they were all falling straight down toward the horizon in every direction so you had to spin around to see the whole show. Not bad for December. DT __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Dress up your holiday email, Hollywood style. Learn more. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com