If you are interested in dark-sky observing this weekend, a number of folks are planning on the Gravel Quarry (East of Park City) Friday night, and Wolf Creek Summit (East of Camas) Saturday night. I'm also aware of at least one guy that's planning to be back at the Gravel Pit Sunday night (Monday's a holiday in case you forgot). There may be other plans this weekend, but that's what I'm aware of if you want company. Directions can be found on the UVAA website if you've never been to either of these sites: http://www.uvaa.org/parties.html Clear skies (finally!) Rich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Is anyone planning on observing the Tempel 1 impact tonight? According to my Kstars program the position of the comet tonight should be at RA 13H 37m 23s and DEC -9˚ 31' 11'. At the same time Spica will be at 13H 25m 28s and RA -11˚ 11' 26" So if you Center Spica and adjust the RA forward by 12 minutes and Adjust the DEC higher by 1˚ 40' 15", you should be able to see Tempel 1. My only problem is the Southern sky from where I'm at is very light polluted (Provo/Orem), so that part of the sky is usually pretty hard to view. I'm going to take both my scopes out and at least try to see it (assuming the skies stay clear).
Darren Davis wrote:
Is anyone planning on observing the Tempel 1 impact tonight?
We've been using the Big Scope at SPOC to observe it the past few nights. It's very faint and diffuse but we have been able to see it. We'll be there again tonight dividing our time between watching the comet through the observatory scopes and watching a live satellite feed from NASA on NASA Television (we just got the equipment installed for that yesterday). It wasn't supposed to be a public event (We were fearful the public will be disappointed by the view) but I see one of the SLC papers mentioned the "Wallop Watch" in today's issue so I guess the cat is out of the proverbial bag. Feel free to come on out and let's hope the crowd is not too large. Patrick
Some images taken here in Hawaii http://astroday.net We're preparing for our Deep Impact program at the local community college, weather is clear and warm and all video and web links are active. Our observing session last night on the Kaupo side was so so as clouds drifted thru the field and challenged viewing. Temple 1 was very faint almost ghost like best seen with averted vision (8" F4, 30mm and 17mm EP's) , not at all like last years flock of comets. Aloha and Have fun tonite Rob
participants (4)
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Darren Davis -
Patrick Wiggins -
Richard Tenney -
Rob Ratkowski