From: Collin Smith [mailto:CollinofAlabama@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 5:21 PM
Subject: Sunday night astro-exploits
Astronomigos,
This past Sunday night was a bright one, gibbous moon blazin' down on us, but we had a nice group behind the treeline at Lubbock Lake Landmark. That treeline sure does make a lot of difference! Gary and Scott showed up again. Last time we were out there I had set up the scopes on the concrete just west of the treeline, and we paid a severe price against the bitter winter wind. But on the 20th, we were relatively comfortable. This was the second Sunday night in February when I got by with just my wool sweater, no Iowa-hardened full length down coat required.
I arrived later than I'd wanted, about 8:30, but we stayed till after 10:30, so I still got in plenty of viewing in. Johnny and Don were set up and Scott and Gary had their big binoculars out. Didn't waste any time finding Comet Machholz, now considerably closer to Polaris than ever. Picking up the Double Cluster was pretty elementary immediately afterwards, followed by other Cassiopeian fare: M103, NGC 663, 659, & 457 (ET Cluster).
Of course, no winter night of observing is complete without a look at Orion. Don first split Rigel quite nicely. We then turned to a VERY dim, washed out M78, followed by the always stunning M42. I left my 2" eyepiece in to get the big macro view of the Trapezium, but Don ramped up the power to 200+ times and got six stars out of the nebular cloud. At Johnny's prodding we dug for the planetary NGC 2022, Tom Trusock's Challenge Object in his "Small Wonders: Orion" article on Cloudy Nights. We swept the area but looked to no avail, Luna dashing our attempts to pluck any detail against the glowing moonglow of the night sky. No doubt we each swept right over it, oblivious to the object at hand. For a future dark sky night, though.
After this, Don got the open cluster M50. Then we moved on to M41. With much egging from Scott, I finally found M93. We also split Beta Monoceros - a triple star. We got beautiful Alpheratz in Andromeda, too. We looked for two more doubles in Leo and the Monoceros area to no avail. Don split Castor.
But the night belonged to Saturn. Don put 300x to it and Saturn looked GREAT -- moving quickly through the eyepiece of course, but beautiful to behold. The interior Crepe Ring was evident. Cassini was clear in my scope, but again, Don's hinted at the Enke Division, making the A Ring look phonograph-like. We both easily got five moons. Titan was large and, visually in a Newtonian at least, off to the left of the planet (along with most of the 5 visible moons).
Surprisingly, we didn't look at the moon. We'd looked at it the Sunday before, the 13th, when it was still a crescent.
A good night under God's firmament. And the price is right for the heavenly show.
Bleak forecasts ahead, though the moon is full on Thursday anyway. C'est la vie. When the clouds clear, we'll do it again, and with dark skies!
Happy Trails,
CDS

-----Original Message-----
From: Collin Smith [mailto:CollinofAlabama@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 4:02 PM
Subject: Sunday & Sunday
Folks,
This Sunday night the 20th, we'll be meeting at Lubbock Lake Landmark around 7:45 PM The winds will be out of the southwest, so we might setup inside the tree line in the grass. The moon will be big so there won't be any dark sky observing, but a clear sky beats none at all, what we'll certainly get tonight and are supposed to just be finishing up with tomorrow night.
Hope to see everyone there this Sunday!
CDS