HJRO will not be open tonight, at least not by me - Friday report

Friday night viewing report.  

QUICK SUMMARY  - Looked at about a dozen objects under marginal viewing conditions.

Briefly we had four FAAC volunteers show up hoping that some of the HFCC club members might show up.  One HFCC member (Aaron) showed up late.  The others were apparently unable to make it with the late announcement and cold weather.  Perhaps they had to many other plans to show up in the almost freezing weather.   The viewing conditions were pretty bad although the skies looked fairly good down to about 25 degrees above the horizon.  Sky glow and humidity made the sky appear to be hazy near the horizon and when I finally left at 2am a heavy icy mist and more humidity covered the low lying areas of the ground and affecting the sky viewing, making it look like a clear bowl up high, but foggy near the horizon.  

The weather is supposed to be about the same Saturday night, but humidity will be even worse.  Expect a heavy icy dew falling.  Those standing outside will have telescopes and themselves covered with a dew frost that will be cold and of course increasingly thick throughout the evening once the ice dew starts falling.

Because of the relatively light turnout on Friday, and because I'm not feeling very well.  I'm not opening up Saturday.  The other FAAC volunteers at HJRO had enough of the fair viewing conditions and cold and I'm pretty sure they won't show up as they had enough of that poor weather and viewing last night.   I have to hope and plan for Monday's event with up to 40 visitors.  I'm actually hoping that I'll feel much better and we have some decent viewing conditions so we can host the event Monday.  But there is a part of me that hopes the weather is bad for Monday and we can reschedule the boy scout event, because I don't know how well I'll recover by Monday from the cold and a "cold bug" that apparently has taken hold of me today.

NOW FOR THE VIEWING DETAILS  (We had three or four visitors for solar viewing and four volunteers and visitors for night viewing.)

Three people from Lake Erie Metro Park arrived.  They were told we were open by Tim Dey.  We had one visitor a new member (Aaron) from the HFCC club, but actually he has been here before and is automatically a member of Faac.   Aaron arrived late and only saw the late night objects, and others were leaving when he arrived.  I think Aaron was there for 90 minutes to 2 hours.  We talked with him about meteor shower viewing and viewing sites for some of the time.  Rick thought Crosswinds marsh was a good area to view meteors locally.  But I added with the cold weather and late hours required with frost, I thought that would be challenging and not very rewarding for this Saturday night.  I also mentioned I've never attended a meteor shower party or been at one where I felt the view was worth the trouble, but I often view with telescopes and don't view meteors at dark skies, naked eye, which is the way most shower watchers see more meteors.   

Many times showers show as few as half the meteors per hour as they are rated and you won't often see those in brighter skies.  Some locations nearby are darker, but Lincoln Park and HJRO is not one of them.  Tim Dey said he saw about 25 meteors per hour during a meteor shower a couple months back, but he was at a dark sky site.  When I tried to view the same shower for 45 minutes from my yard in Lincoln Park, I saw no meteors at all.  A fellow FAAC astronomer from Dearborn, saw maybe two in the same 45 minutes.

I sent a text message on Thursday, that we'd be open on Friday, to the HFCC Astronomy club president, but didn't know if any of the members would show up.

Last night (Friday) it was cold out.  The 40 degree early temperatures felt much colder with a gentle humid breeze that would later turn to ice dew falling.  It felt like a cross between visiting a humid England, and going up north to snowmobile.  

The icy frost and high humidity didn't help viewing much.  A light breeze made it feel colder outside.

We had four FAAC volunteers who showed up for the HFCC Friday viewing,   Tim Campbell, Art Parent, Rick Arzadon and myself.

Also Mike showed up briefly and was there earlier in the day briefly during solar viewing.  Mike and Tim were out for the solar viewing hour or so that we were out from 4 to 5pm.

We looked at a number of objects, but these were spaced apart due to some being up early and others up later.  Unfortunately the sky was much worse than predicted for clear seeing via the clear sky chart.  We could see clearly but high humidity and some winds probably caused the seeing to be degraded a bit, we could not really see Jupiter very sharp even with the 25mm eyepiece on the C14.   Earlier in the evening we could see Jupiter and the shadow from IO on the surface of the cloud layer, but the moons shadow wasn't tack sharp as it would have been the night before under better viewing.  I could put 12.5mm on the c14 with great viewing on Thursday night, but last night even the 13mm that Tim Campbell had didn't show much beyond a fuzzy mushy large image in the eyepiece, not much detail, just a soft larger image.  The 25mm showed detail but not tack sharp detail.  It was probably sharper with a lower power eyepiece.

7pm
We also looked at the moon before it set, only a couple of us looked at the moon as that was early on.  Rick and I looked at the moon.  Tim and Art arrived in time to get a brief glimpse of the moon.

7:30pm
The four of us also looked at Neptune and Uranus.  Neptune had set by the time other visitors stopped by.

We looked at the Ring Nebula.

We looked at Jupiter early and throughout the evening as well it looked better as it rose, but humidity conditions were getting worse and it didn't look to much better than when it was first visible.

We looked at the double cluster and M45, common open clusters.

We looked at m42 the Orion Nebula.  We also looked at some other objects, M1, some open clusters.  We tried to look for the dumbbell nebula later in the evening, but it was to low and washed out with sky glow.

Some looked at m42 with the 03 filter and also a hydrogen beta filter to compare them.  Tim said the. 03 filter was better for m42.

There were probably a few other objects that I forgot to mention.  We had a lot of discussion at times.  For some of the visitors I told them some quick information regarding the observatory and they viewed a half a dozen objects at most.

I setup the binocular telescope and Big Bertha, and some of us looked through them, but the cold weather made it easier to view from inside the observatory.  Aaron mentioned the HFCC group was thinking about looking at a meteor shower.  The shower is a minor one and would likely require very early morning viewing in the 2am to 4am range.  It peaked this morning, and it's a minor shower with only 15 meteors an hour peak predicted.

You will see meteors with naked eye observing and it's better at a dark sky site.  This means you want to be at a dark sky area, and it should have nice views hopefully with a low horizon to see more of the sky.

The cold frost and icy conditions made the viewing conditions much less than ideal.  Clear, but not decent high powered views were a disappointment.  We had a good time talking but the cold and lack of visitors was a bit disappointing.

It's supposed to be worse today, with more icy conditions with higher humidity.  This means it will likely be cold, frosty with heavy frosts and a bowl like haze near the horizon.  That will make huge sky glow near the horizon near city lights and make low horizon viewing difficult.  HJRO doesn't have a good location for meteor viewing.  I've really never been to a meteor shower party or been much of one to go out and look for meteor showers, I just happen to see an occasional meteor during a viewing event when a shower might happen, catching a glimpse of a stray one.

Members who have done meteor shower watching have missed results, at a darker site it would be better.

When I woke up this morning I felt really sick, like a stomach flu bug or something hit me.  It was probably due to the cold and fatigue of the long sessions during the past two nights.

I can't see the point of opening up HJRO tonight, for a couple of visitors and poor viewing conditions.  The moon might be up early and offer some interesting viewing, but in my experience HFCC astronomy club members often show up late at night so they would miss the early viewing.  For some reason, lately the trend for college age viewers is they show up after 11pm.

If I open up tonight, it would only be for a couple of hours, but I'm feeling to sick to open up tonight and I don't think the other Faac volunteers would show up to lighten the load in running the observatory due to the cold, poor viewing condition and low turnout we'd expect.

So I don't think I'm going to open up the observatory at all tonight.

Maybe I can get one of the other key keepers to open up.

The other problem with opening up tonight is if the weather improves by Monday, I may have 40 scouts and parents arrive at HJRO.  I can't risk getting more ill and being unable to open by Monday because I sat outside at HJRO under frost conditions for six hours tonight.  Especially for one visitor.

I'm really thinking about limiting and budgeting the time that HJRO is open to much shorter time periods and announce we would be open for only a short two hour window, especially during the winter hours.

That's my thoughts today.  I was out for six hours observing Thursday and eight hours Friday, so I think my observing time at HJRO during this cold weekend has hit it's limit.

Greg