Nearly Skunked

Brian Skiff examines a Palomar Sky Survey plate from 1955.

In the morning, we went up to Mars Hill to use Lowell's library to find a paper from 1993 on the Near Earth Asteroid we were observing before midnight.  For some reason, that article has not been scanned so is not available online.  It took less than a minute to locate the journal on the many shelves and find the paper.  After analyzing our data from the night before, Brian Skiff and Larry Wasserman wandered by.  Brian had found some old Palomar Survey plates in the Lowell archives.  On the light table, we looked at a plate taken by George Abell in January 1955 which had his hand notes about globular clusters in the Fornax Galaxy Cluster directly on the plate.

 

After dinner, we headed down to Anderson Mesa Station.  We knew that our night would be delayed in getting started because the Lowell docents were bringing a group of 14 Navajo middle school students went through the 42-inch and 72-inch telescopes.  Linda and I ended up passing out hot chocolate and answering questions. 

 

The 72-inch Telescope at Anderson Mesa Station.

When we did get going, we were nearly skunked. When we started the telescope at about 8:30 PM, the humidity was 78 percent and climbing. The operating rules says the dome must be closed when the humidity gets as high as 90 percent. The humidity steadily rose over the next hour. I wanted to get a few observations of the Near Earth Asteroid in case it turns out to have a long period, which we did. However, after only three images, we had to close the dome.   At about1 AM, the humidity was at 93 percent and still climbing. We with clouds headed our way, we called it a night and  got nothing on our primary Trojan target.

 

Tonight, the docents are bringing 50 students. That will likely be a mess, but they promise to be gone by 9:30 PM.