Log, Jun 13, 2008
45 people. Well it was Friday the Thirteenth but in spite of triskaidekaphobia it was a pretty nice night. Yes the Moon was up but so were scads of kids having a great time. Happy kids make up for all the other slight problems like mediocre seeing conditions.We had someone set up an 8" cope in the yard and he and Ernie were out there showing things we were not looking at inside. I was too busy inside to get out before he went but Francine had a chance to meet him. WE also had a lady who came down who is interested in volunteering but frankly we were so swamped, I couldn't talk with her until she had to bring her son home.We saw the Moon from before sundown, and on and off throughout the night. We saw Saturn (but the image wobbled as the night sky cooled. We saw a tiny disk of Mars which is on the far side of the Solar system and not much to look at tonight. We saw M4, M56, the Beehive and we finished the night with Antares.Ernie suggested that we try to split Antares using a combination of the apodizing mask we made for Sirius and an assortment of blue filters. We are declaring success because we are both certain that we saw two images which did not rotate when we rotated the eyepieces.-Les Coleman
