Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

11/20/2003 0000 UTC

I happened to glance at the thermometer about 7 PM and noticed that it was 41 degrees out. When the sun went down the sky was at least mostly clear, but the weather guy on the TV had said that the night wouldn't be warm unless it got cloudy. But I went outside anyway to see if the sky happened to be clear. Surprisingly, it was. For the first time in about three weeks we had clear sky and an air temperature above freezing at the same time.

So I packed the scope in the car and drove to Roberts Field. I got there about 7:30 and surveyed the sky. It was not as clear as I would have liked. There were clouds near the horizon to the north and south and the overall transparency was rather poor. But I could see stars down to third or fourth magnitude, so I gave it a shot.

By 7:40 the scope was set up and polar aligned. I selected an easy two-star alignment and the Autostar picked Capella and Vega. Capella was around ten degrees off, which put it outside the field of the finder so I had to hunt around for it. (Someday I need to make a zero-power sight to handle problems like this -- sighting along the telescope tube to judge up / down / left / right doesn't work all that well.) Vega was off as well, but in the finder, so it didn't take very long to center it. "Alignment successful!" But this mount really needs help.

Since I was already at Vega, I decided to try for the Ring Nebula, M 57, just a few degrees southwest. No joy. The sky was probably not clear enough for me to find it and the GOTO is still not precise enough for me to be confident that the telescope was actually pointing in the right place.

So I elected to slew to Albireo, since I was in the neighborhood. The GOTO was off by around three degrees, but Albireo is bright enough to spot in the finder, so I was able to zero in. That will probably be my last chance this year for that particular double, as it was already only just clear of the trees in the west from this location.

Mars was high in the southwest. I decided it was worth a look. Mars is a lot smaller now than it was back in August and September. And it is no longer a full disc -- more like 75% illuminated. Even at high power, I could not resolve any detail whatever. I don't know whether that was entirely due to the small size or whether the sky conditions were just that bad.

The rest of my usual targets were either too close to zenith or obscured by clouds. And even with gloves on, my hands were getting cold. So I called it a night at 8:20. All in all, a poor outing. If we'd had better weather for astronomy in the past three weeks, I probably wouldn't have even set up. I'm really not comfortable when the air temperature gets below 45 degrees and this time of year it's almost never that warm on a clear night.