47 people. What between the intense moonlight (the Moon was 99.7% full) and excessive moisture which formed whispy clouds, high level haze and patches of really nasty fog viewing was maybe a 3 on the overly calibrated scientifically vapid supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Frosty Drew Viewing Scale. We actually did try for other targets. When I moved the scope to M31, Steve thought I did somthing wrong because what he saw looked like a globular cluster. Sigh.

Normally, the Plieades is a crowd pleaser. The six or seven naked eye stars burgeon into well over a hundred blue white jewels. Tonight we added perhaps twenty lack luster blurs to Plione's lovely daughters.

Ok say I, if you can't do deep space wonders, concentrate on stars. Lets talk about star colors. Hmmmm, uh oh, lets NOT talk about star colors. Everything is gray or gray. Scratch Alpheratz, Beta Peg, Mu And and a whole lot of usually interesting colored stars.

Hmmmmm, lots of kids. Oh well lets look at the Moon. After complaints from kids who knew their stuff that they couldn't see craters well let alone lunar highlands, I went into a song and dance abbout how straight on aligments of the Sun Earth and Moon causes almost all contrast to be lost. As if kids cared about contrast when they couldn'r see the Moon. Well the software kept them occupied.

A tribute to George

F. Bliven.

-Les Coleman

Author:

Leslie Coleman

Entry Date:

Sep 20, 2002

Published Under:

Leslie Coleman's Log