Too many stars!

Sunday night the 30th I went out again to the Meyer observatory near Clifton, TX. The drive is about an hour to the West from Riesel. I was treated to an excellent sunset all the way out there. It was dark when I arrived and Willie [Strickland] had already been there a while and had the dome open and tracking Comet 8P Tuttle which was very close to M33, directly overhead. Willie had a pair of 15 x 70 Binoculars along with his own Celestron 11" SCT, a 10" Orion Dobsonian and a 80mm Meade Refractor.

The sky was very dark and clear. My first reaction was there are too many stars! The Milky Way was excellent stretching all the way from Orion in the East to Cygnus which was setting in the west. After about 10 minutes of literally staring into space, my eyes had started to adjust to the light and I had got my bearings. I used the 15 x 70 Binoculars and easily found M31, It was also just visible naked eye. This was by far the darkest sky I had ever seen, far darker than than in Riesel or on the Algarve in Portugal. On my previous visit to the Meyer Obs, the Moon was high and virtually full. Even so it does still suffer from Light pollution. The city of Gatesville to the South and the village of Clifton to the East.

After some more scanning of the sky Comet 17P Holmes was visible Naked eye, we viewed it through the Dobsonian although it looked far better through the 15x70 Binoculars. The scopes were then aimed at Comet 8P/Tuttle which was very close to M33 and once again the best view was in the binoculars.

After approx 90 minutes outside Willie was getting cold and we retired inside to start imaging both comets on 61cm RC scope using the Roper CCD. I will post more details of these along with Images when Willie has finished processing them and forwarded them to me. I pointed out to Willie that it was actually very mild (+8C), by comparison to some of the recent Friday nights with Brian and Co at Austerfield. I took numerous photographs of various parts of the sky out at the observatory whilst outside and I am not happy with any of them. I just could not get the focusing on my camera quite right, although on the LCD screen on the camera they looked ok once viewed on a PC they were actually very poor. This was the best of a very bad bunch.

Pictured is Orion and Taurus (Top) with Sirius just coming up over the trees. The light pollution is from the Clifton Village about 10 miles away. Taken at 2024 CST. (0224 UT). Canon EOS 350D 18-55MM lens. 10Sec, f5.6, ISO 1600. Processed in Corel paintshop pro.