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Attended: Jeff and I Equipment I used: TV-101 on a G-11 losmondy mount, 80 mm ST Celestron piggybacked as a guide scope shooting through the TV with a 35 mm camera loaded with 200 speed Ectachrome which will be pushed processed 2 stops. I hope to pick them up Fri. Afternoon. Jeff had his AP setup. Jeff had enough DC power to make the California electrical utilities jealous. Well, my report won't be as informative as Jeff's but I'll share it any way. I know when Jeff says the weather looks good for viewing even though it looks to me like it will rain, the odds are always in Jeff's favor. Even though It was cloudy all day and I didn't think we would have any luck, it cleared nicely and gave us some great sky's. We arrived at the site and decided quickly to drive up on a knoll where we thought It would be drier than the last soggy messier night at this location. It was much nicer there and the view was much better. On the agenda for this night; astrophotography. We began setting up before dark and were polar aligning by 930ish. My first attempt at drift aligning didn't go too well. Probably because I never quite had a complete grasp of it and it has been about 6-7 months since I've last been out. My first shot was of m16. I took about a 30 min exposure and chased it all over the viewfinder. I knew my alignment was poor so I realigned. On the recommendation of Mr. Ball I put my polar scope back in and realized I was putting Polaris at the wrong place on the grid. Once Jeff showed me the correct placing I checked my alignment by drift method again and had no significant drift for about 5-8 min. My second, third, fourth, and fifth shot were of double cluster. I believe the fifth one was actually in focus. The next shot was the pleades. I took a 35min exposure of this one. Around 3am. we noticed fog surrounding but below us in the low areas. It stayed low and away all night. I was comptemplating shooting the coathanger cluster which would have shown up nicely in my camera viewfinder when Jeff suggested the flame nebula. This was to be my final photo for the night with the exposure ending around 4:15 am. I then capped the scope and left the dew heaters on and slept in the back of the Subaru till around 6:40. We packed up to the rising sun and I went on to work. It was such a beautiful sky I never once wanted to pack up early and go to bed after all you can sleep anytime, but how often do you have a clear moonless dark sky nearby?
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