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Date: Monday August 20-21 August has given us some very nice opportunities of late. The sky is certainly transitioning to the fall. This was evident as Taurus was rising in the east around 2:30 a.m. and Saturn was just north of Aldebaran. I really like the Greasy Ridge location. Dave and I drove up a hill for a great horizon and we were totally isolated from the roads and traffic. I believe there may have been 3 cars traveling in the area all night. No cars noted after 11:30 p.m. The Milky Way was quite prominent. The Huntington light dome is very intense near the horizon, but it quickly dissipates and does not climb above 10-15 degrees above the horizon. There is a marked contrast from the light dome to the Milky Way. The Ohio river valley fog also serves as a suppressant of light from Huntington. Dave and I did a totally photographic night with some binocular observations. The seeing was very steady as evidenced by A0 and A1 readouts on my ST4. This is a very good indicator of the quality of seeing. This was the second night out with my new mount and it performed flawlessly. Although we were often busy setting up photos, every time I looked up I saw a meteor. It would have been a great night to shoot meteors! The binocular highlights were M31, M33, M45, M16, M17, M24, double cluster, NGC 7000, and M11. Dave and I both thought we could see M33 naked eye. It took some averted vision. This is a pretty good indicator of the quality of seeing this night. We napped off and on until we packed up at 6:45 a.m. It was a great night and good to be out with Dave again. Hope to see you at a dark sky site in the future.
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