June 8, 2001

A friend of mine that lives out in the country invited me to come observing at his house some night when the weather was clear. Tonight was such a night. The weather this weekend was cloudy and uncertain, but as sunset approached, the sky was clear. So, I packed up my telescope and drove out to his place.

The best place to set up turned out to be his front yard, which was a few acres in size. It offered nearly unobstructed views to the North and South, and treelines to the East and West that extended to about 20 degrees. I didn't really want to observe below that line anyway, so this wasn't a problem. In fact, the Eastern treeline actually helped to blot out most of the skyglow from nearby Iola.

I arrived at the site right about at sunset. This gave me plenty of time to set up my equipment, apply bug spray (my friend had just mowed that day, so the bug problem was terrible). It was encouraging to note that the only lights I saw were a couple of red lights atop a radio tower, and two ground-hugging sidewalk lights in front of my friend's house. None of these provided any distraction to my viewing.

While waiting for the sky to completely darken, I took a peek at some of the brighter stars and checking my collimation. I noticed a line of clouds forming in the West, but so far, they were still below the treeline. The Southern constellations are not easily accessible from my own backyard, so I looked in that direction first.

Sombrero (M 104)	Spiral Galaxy	Virgo	10:10pm CDT
NGC 4594	RA: 12 40.0	Dec: -11 37	Mag: 8.3
	Even at 122X, this is a pretty bright galaxy. It has a long oval shape, which is fairly flat. Near the top of the galaxy (as seen through my telescope), a black band is visible with averted vision. There is just a hint of a glow on the other side of the band, which helps to bring out the dust lane.
M 4	Globular Cluster	Scorpius	10:40pm CDT
NGC 6121	RA: 16 23.6	Dec: -26 32	Mag: 5.9
	At 81X, this is a fairly dim and compact cluster. Its most distinguishing feature seems to be a line of stars running the length of the cluster. The seeing is poor enough tonight, that many of the stars are difficult to resolve with direct vision.
I started to turn toward M51, but noticed that most of the stars had a hazy glow around them. The Telrad was starting to dew up, so my first thought was that my glasses were getting wet. But, after wiping them off, the stars still looked hazy, so it must be the cloud bank rolling in. On closer inspection, the entire North and West sections of the sky were covered in haze and clouds. I wanted to get a peek at Mars at some point this evening, so I figured I better take a look now.
Mars	Planet	Sagittarius	10:50pm CDT
	RA: 17 49.9	Dec: -25 32	Mag: -1.9
	Mars was still rather low in the sky, but the clouds and haze were quickly catching up with this part of the sky. At 122X, the planet appears as a fairly large pale orange disk, with a dark green C-shaped streak. The planet really appeared to be boiling.

By this point, even the bright stars in Scorpius were barely visible. Talk about your dark skies! I could only see about a dozen or so of the brighter stars shining through the haze layer. Time to call it a night.