Log, Mar 10, 2006
22 people. The passing of the seasons was most notable last night. It was only last week that the temperature dropped to 16 degrees but tonight it never was chillier than 57. And somehow the sky seems to have jumped another season as well. For the first time this year, Saturn did not stay conveniently placed for viewing. Only those who came early got a view of the Ringed Planet because it moved up behind the dome's shutter before 8:30. The warm weather also made the equipment a lot happier. The focuser which had a bad case of the "chillies" last week worked just fine today. We had a lot of old friends drop by in spite of the wretched viewing. Art Guarino came down with his wife and a friend of his. Nick Teta led at least one star hopping session. A little later Mike Black came down with his younger brother, who had a chance to actually run the telescope when things calmed down.Unfortunately, the warm weather brought some mediocre seeing with it. Star images were large and blurry, and a number of deep space objects were nearly washed out. In fact, M1 (the Crab Nebula) was totally invisible. The poor seeing was degraded by an 87% full Moon sitting right next to Saturn.-Les Coleman
