[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Taking my own advice...

[Mike McCabe]

Greetings Fellow Sky Lovers,
As predicted, the sky DID clear up splendidly yesterday and even though it really only lasted about twelve to fifteen hours, I took full advantage of those hours to do some astronomical observing.
The solar gear came out for a bit during mid-afternoon, and a full array of views were enjoyed in both white and hydrogen-alpha lights. Then late afternoon I jumped in the truck for a little twilight observing adventure. For January the temps were quite balmy, which was nice because often times at this juncture of the winter season these adventures can become an exercise in endurance. I remember many of them painfully well...badaboom.  :-)

I've got a new low-western-horizon haunt that is super convenient compared to my older ones, meaning closer to home, and offers a near-zero degree horizon along the range of ecliptic points throughout the seasons. During this visit a chopper was hovering off in the distance while I took my photos. Turns out it was a Med-Flight copter waiting to land in a soccer field just a half-mile from my house, and I drove by the busy scene on the way home.
My evening hours were occupied by testing a basement-dweller 10" telescope that I've had for years and just recently refurbished. Last night it was used to look at everything from the observing objectives to the distant gas giants in our solar system. Its performance I'm happy to say was good, with just some minor tweaks now needed to refine the motions a bit, then it should be a stout performer.
It was nice to see this morning that several of our members got out in an attempt to see Comet Edgar. By my count at least five of us were out there, with results ranging from Matt's amazing portrait of it, to reports that the sky wouldn't even allow Vega to be seen.
I was lucky in the sense that I think I had a better sky down here than most did, and when I went out at five in the morning the comet was easy to find and looked great in my 20x80 binoculars. It had a large coma with a stellar core, with the coma showing some elongation in the direction of the dust tail. Eventually I began touring around to take in a few globulars (M13, M3, and M53) during which time the sky started to haze over, and by the time I dragged the equipment back in at 6am the western half of the sky was gone. That's it, no more clear skies for you!

One of the best parts about comet viewing is watching their motion across the sky, and seeing Matt's image this morning reminded me of that. His picture, which was taken before my visual observation, shows the comet positioned when it made an isosceles right triangle with the bright stars in the field, while at 5:15am it made an equilateral triangle with them. I didn't notice any movement during the time I observed it this morning, but at 20x that would be a stretch anyhow. Movement is much more easily observed during telescopic observations.
Keep Looking Up!
Mike McCabe
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