A lot of people have been under the weather.

Let's see, both my sisters have been under the weather with some kind of bug. I've been under the weather and a fellow Faac observer James has been not feeling well.

Symptoms may vary from person to person. Some are complaining about sore throats, some fatigue. I have been having a little bit of a sore throat and cramps and aches and pains in my legs from time to time as well as a general feeling of great fatigue from time to time. The chords in my hands feel like they are aching as well once in a while. I had a doctor take a brief look at my throat and she said, it looked okay. I was wondering if some of this might be related to allergies, there is a lot of tree mold in the air according to some recent local news reports.

With all the people I know being under the weather, one has to wonder if some kind of virus is going around.

Today James called me and I thought he wanted to know if HJRO was going to be open so I returned his call. I said I probably would not open up HJRO myself but might visit if others were going to open up. I called a Tim to find out if he was planning on opening up. He said he was thinking about it and may be opening up later but we should call the observatory phone to be sure they are open.

I packed up my car thinking I might meet James at the observatory and do a little observing outside, while two Tim's were inside testing cameras. I drove by the observatory at about 9:30 but nobody was there. I had a few errands to run, one being the picking up of some medication for our family and also ran through a couple of places to get a jot chocolate and a coffee. I returned home with the medication and coffee and then got back into my car and started to drive while calling to find out what was happening at HJRO.

It turned out that the two Tim's were busy with some other things and one of them said the sky didn't look very good out.

I decided to drive to Wyandotte by the waterfront to look at Saturn and the moon, fairly quickly and then perhaps open up HJRO if I felt good enough or return home. I felt the more likely scenario would be I would return home rather than open up HJRO with sick parents at home and myself being sick.

I told James I would call him if I was going to open up, but decided that it wasn't worth the risk and hassle to open up. I did talk to Art Parent as well on the phone and talked to him for the thirty or so minutes I observed. I ended up heading home. When I arrived the heat from the vents in the car, brought a feeling of fire passing over my fingers. Like the hairs on my hand were lit up. It was an interesting sensation, almost like a form of tickling sensation. Tickling and pain sensations can be almost the same and interchangeable at times. It's related to nerve sensors. But rather than speculate if my muscle and tendon aches were a kind of flu, I'm better off giving a quick observing report.

At 36 and 48 power Saturn looked stunning through the BT 80 vixen binocular telescope. It looked like seeing and transparency were very good. This at relatively low powers however which can be misleading. I put filters on the 32mm plossls and looked at the moon with 26x. The moon of course is one day past being full. The moon looked okay, but heat currents seemed to affect the seeing. The moon revealed a problem in seeing conditions that was not visible with the planet Saturn.

The temperature in Wyandotte was about 46 degrees according to my cars thermometer. The air was calm and somewhat moist but not nearly as bad as it was Friday early in the morning.

That's about it for a report. The sky is supposed to be really good for viewing the next couple of nights. I just don't know if we will have any healthy operators to open up HJRO.

Sorry about the late warnings or last minute reports. I've been to busy and feeling inconsistent in my health lately so I can't easily plan or give a good announcement before many impromptu observing sessions.

Greg


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