A couple of FAAC members showed up for last nights observing session.
I wasn't sure I'd have the small gate open, so I only announced we'd be out there late at night.
It was bitter cold which would be a disappointment for casual visitors. You'd want to dress up for the coldest conditions.
Observing is difficult in the cold, because you're not exercising, so you're not gaining heat from physical activity. It's more of a standing around, chatting and sitting activity.
I dressed with about 5 layers and this included boots that are winter hunting boots rated for 50 below zero weather. I had a warm snowmobile jacket, pants for snowmobiling, as well as long johns. I had two hooded sweaters on each with a hood. I had earmuffs. I didn't always wear my gloves while inside the observatory.
I felt for the most part as if I was observing on a warm summer night with all the layers I had on. We had an IR heater on that was aimed at a chair in the observatory, away from the open shutter. It would keep Wendi a little warmer and at times we moved this and move the position of the chair depending on the rotation of the dome. The viewing conditions improved as midnight approached, but also that was the predicted peak of viewing conditions according to the clear sky chart.
The eyepieces were cold and many metal objects are cold and pull the heat out of you if you touch them.
All in all, I stayed warm most of the time. We took a break and went by White Castle. We ended up watching a movie during that break as we were waiting for Saturn to rise up higher in the sky. We wended to see a good image of Saturn and it's in better position currently at about 1AM in the morning and it gets better as it rises higher and higher in the sky up to about 4AM. After sitting and talking for quite a while we returned at about 1 AM to get a quick look at Saturn and see if we could see the "bright storm" on the surface.
I thought we could see this storm earlier, but now I wonder if I'm not just seeing a dark cloud band on the surface. Art thought the surface feature we saw was a shadow of the ring of Saturn. We actually didn't have enough power and resolution to verify if the features we saw was a cloud band, storm or shadow.
The dome is having more problems (maybe it needs some grease), rotating in the winter. We looked at only a half a dozen objects, mostly star clusters. We looked t M42 and M45, the Soul Nebula and "the ghost of Jupiter". We looked at the double cluster. Art and Wendi saw five stars in the Trapezium of M42 with the 40mm eyepiece on the C14. We'd need a higher power eyepiece to see 6 stars, but didn't look at it with more power last night.
Jupiter is positioned a lot closer to the sun now as it sets much sooner. We are not looking at Jupiter anymore, but Saturn rises earlier and earlier in the night sky each evening. So it will be the planet we'll likely be focusing on as the weather starts to break.
We chatted about all kinds of astronomy gear dreams and ideas which are usually left to late night chatter and discussion.
Late at night sometime around 2AM I arrived home, (maybe a little later). I still felt relatively warm all bundled up and decided to try to setup the Binocular telescope outside at home and take a peek at Saturn to see how it looked through the Vixen Binoculars at 36 and 48 power. I was able to stay outside and view Saturn for about an hour before I started feeling cold. This was while I was exposed to a slight breeze. The ground of course was cold and I was standing on cement at home. Had the viewing conditions been better, i could have stayed out at the observatory practically all night, because I was bundled up very warmly.
The observatory has some advantages of course. One being a wall to block much of the wind if there is a light breeze. The second being a wooden floor with carpeting which doesn't try to pull heat out of your shoes or boots.
Someday, who knows, we might have a separate control room or something at HJRO which would be a portable control room to control the telescope as it takes photos and provides a live video feed. That would allow observers to perhaps plan and warm up on cold winter nights. This winter has been a pretty bad winter for observing. When it's very cold out we often have very good conditions, and in the winter we have longer nights. But we've had a lot of poor seeing conditions this year. So many times braving the cold has not been as rewarding as it would be in a normal winter.
