submitted by Tom Heisey

I went out to Skyview last night and had a pretty good night. I didn't have any club members show up, but I did find one of Ron's students
(from fall) taking some sky shots with his camera. He was a real novice who enjoyed seeing some of the major winter views for the first time.
Hopefully, you'll hear from him or he'll appear at the 3rd Friday party in the near future as he's interested in going observing and learning
more.
 
OK, now on to the report:
 
Well, the night turned out both better and worse than I had expected.
Despite the weather predictions, the sky was free of clouds and the wind
was almost missing, but the humidity was fairly high and dew became a
problem later on. That gave good seeing (steady skies), but also poor
transparency (dimmed the stars). It was a nice, quiet night out at
Skyview.
 
I had some real difficulty finding the comet - Thanks to poor
transparency and the proximity to Lubbock's light pollution, the rising
comet was not an obvious naked eye object. To make matters worse, I
forgot the finder chart (DOH!), so I was searching the wrong portion of
the sky! I swept the sky with telescope and binos, but had no luck, so
I turned to other objects.
 
I had some nice medium and high magnification views of Saturn through
3RF's TV101. They wouldn't compare to views from a Dob or SCT, but the
moons and possibly some details on the planet itself were visible.
After that,
 
I turned to some Winter favorites. The transparency was bad enough that
M51 was barely visible, more of a ghost than a galaxy, so I was limited
to the brighter objects. Naturally, Orion was my first target.
Surprisingly, the outer edges of the nebula showed nicely, despite the
poor transparency. After taking my time in low mag/wide view, I tried
to push the magnification and had a great look at the Trapezium and the
rich details central portion of nebula.
 
The Pleiades provided a fantastic view at low magnification and the
colors of the stars were nicely apparent. The little triangle in the
center of the cluster was nicely present. I swung to the Hyades next
and again the stars were steady pinpoints of beautiful colors. It was a
short hop to M35 in Gemini for a quick view of this fine little cluster.
 
Much of the time I was observing, I had a problem with dew/humidity on
the eyepiece. I would often have to switch between the TV101 and my
binoculars or the infrared night vision monocular as the eyepiece would
dew up from the warmth and moisture of my eye. Thanks to the day's
humidity, it would take about five minutes to clear the eyepiece, which
also gave me the chance to sit back and relax for some naked eye
astronomy, too.
 
By now, Saturn was higher and well clear of the terrible light dome, so
I turned back to the search for Lulin's comet. I had remembered the
finder chart a little better, so I started my bino search closer to the
right spot, though it was quite a bit further from Saturn than I had
expected.
 
At about 45 degrees above the horizon, the comet was just barely a naked
eye object out at Skyview. In the eyepiece of the 101mm, the comet gave
a very nice view. It sat between two moderately bright stars, framing
the image very nicely. The core presented a "Hide & Seek" pinpoint of
light that was visible only with averted vision, The bright cored of the
coma was a dense cloud nearby. The extended coma spread out quite a
bit, especially with averted vision. Given the conditions, the main
tail was fairly visible and the anti tail was visible as a ghost (or
imagination?) with averted vision.
 
After viewing through the 101 for a time, I decided to move to the
ST120. The view noticeably improved with the increase in aperture. The
tail was easier to see and the anti-tail was still ghostly, but visible.
The core was more obvious as something not quite stellar with averted
vision. I spent quite a while watching the comet and I'm not positive,
but it seemed that the comet had moved against the background.
 
By 1:30 am, the dew problem started being a real problem, allowing me to
view through an eyepiece for only a few minutes before fogging up, so I
decided to pack it in. All-in-all, it was a good night.
 
If you go to look for Lulin's comet, I would advise you to wait until
midnight to see it at Skyview so it clears the light pollution, or
better yet, head to Emma so you have nice dark sky to see the comet in
all its glory.