Come See the Moon!

"Come see the Moon!"

Ok, I really didn't say that. I'm not sure why, that's what one is supposed to say, right? Last Saturday night I set up my 5" refractor, a Burgess 1278, on MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts to do some sidewalk astronomy. I was still setting up when I had my first pair of "customers."

I had originally put the Garret Optical 30mm Wide Angle eyepice in, but I when I saw how some folks had problems getting the sweet spot, I pulled it and used a Celestron 30mm Plossl. Both eyepieces were in a 2x Barlow. This yields 67x with a FOV of about 0.8 degrees. 67x is great because you can see much of the moon yet still make out craters and ever see the central peak in some of them.

You could see the entire waxing gibbous moon plus some to spare. This was good because I set up right at dusk and Polaris was no where to be seen. I had a pretty good guess at North (from looking at the high tide seaweed mark in Google Maps!). The ASGT does not track well at all if your north is off but it turns out I was good enough. I only had to hit the Down button bout every 15 minutes.

But enough of the tech stuff, what about the people? I met Russian, French and German tourist. Couples, singles. Families. The usual response was "Wow" accompanied with a big smile.

Some people were initially distrustful, but when I assured them that it was completely free they came over and put their eye to the eyepiece.

And of course, some were not interested at all.

I should two bicycle police officers who loved it. Later on I showed 2 other officers with a car, whose observations were cut short by a nearby drug transaction!

Many people couldn't believe that I was doing this for free. Some wanted to tip me. I, of course, refused. I told them to donate to a school but that seems lame, I need a better line to handle those situations. I kept telling the story of John Dobson over and over again, talking of his commitment to sidewalk astronomy.

I was setup for about 2 1/2 hours, thin clouds came and put a haze on the moon but nobody really minded. Late in the evening I tried showing Jupiter but the high winds really made it pretty wobbly.

I'll certainly be back to do this again and I encourage all of you to bring your telescopes to the street and share the sky.

Oh, and what did I say instead of "Come see the moon?" My line was "Would you like to see the moon?" I'm not sure why I changed it, I just did.

Burgess 1278 First and Second Light report

I've had the Burgess 1278 for well over a month now. The first month was spent waiting, waiting for clear skies at a time I would be home to enjoy them. I watched the ClearSkyClock almost obsessively, and illogically believed the 10 day forecasts at weather.com. So a little more than a week ago, I was quite pleased to see that the skies would be clear and I would be home, but barely. I was working in Cambridge that day and would not be home until about 9:30 or 10pm that night. Given how long I waited, I didn’t care. I was especially interested in seeing Jupiter. I had viewed it with the 8” SCT a few weeks before and it was impressive, my best Jupiter ever. I wanted to see how the Burgess compared. I had looked at the Great Red Spot calculator from SkyAndTelescope.com and was pleased to see that it was at the meridian at 10:53pm.

Once I got home, I quickly hauled all the equipment from basement. I didn’t bother with the light pollution screens since I was only planning on viewing Jupiter. The neighbors were interested, as usual, and once I was fully setup, around 11pm, I quickly centered Jupiter and then let the kids look.

Then I pulled up my chair and sat down and looked myself. There it was, the Great Red Spot! As others have noted, it is more of a Great Tan Spot these days but still, I was happy. I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was a kid and the GRS had always been on my life list. I guess I wish I had seen it when it was red, not tan, but still, impressive none-the-less. It was so easy to see that I wondered if I was seeing what I wanted to see. Averted Imagination. I sat and observed for perhaps 20 minutes, waiting for a crystal clear moment. That moment really never came. The skies were just good all along. There were the 4 Galileans visible, no shadows. I stared at the GRS, stared at the bands, it was real, no doubt. I was actually seeing it! I tried to see an detail in the bands, or the Little Red Spot and that third one whose name I can’t remember, no luck, but I was still happy.

I also immediately realized that my carefully planned eyepiece collection was a bit limited. A 2000mm f10 scope does not use the same same set of eyepieces that a scope with a focal length of 1000mm uses somewhat different eyepieces than a 2000mm focal length scope! My normal “max power” eyepiece, a 9mm University Optics HD Abbe Orthoscopic was only giving 111x in this scope, my 7mm only gives 143x. I used the 7mm, which was pretty much the first time I had ever used it, that was the “miracle skies” eyepiece for the SCT. I found the eye relief bare acceptable. (I wear glasses.) I tried barlowing the 9mm with a 2x University barlow and the results were unacceptable, which is to be expected since that exceeds the Dawes’ limit rule of 40x per inch of aperture.

Pumped by my success, I decided to do some other viewing. I’ve been using Sue French’s book, Celestial Sampler, to plan my viewing sessions and I had not planned anything for tonight so I just went along ad hoc. First up was my long time favorite, the M81 and M82 pair. They were beautifully framed by the 34mm Siebert Observatory eyepiece. I was starting to see why some astronomers love wide field eyepieces. Unlike with my SCT, there was plenty of room around the two galaxies. It was quite pleasant to see.

I then went to M51, but alas, I still wasn’t able to see any detail in the arms. I’ve always wanted to see that, haven’t yet. I could, of course, see the second galaxy, but I expected to see that!

I can’t recall many of the other objects I saw. I was did try M57 at stupid power, which was, of course, stupid. It was much better with the 7mm. And I was able to split both of the double doubles. I had never been able to do that before, but then again, I hadn’t tried all that much before either!

By now it was getting close to 1AM so I went back to Jupiter. Yup, the GRS was gone, as expected, this only confirmed that I had seen it, not imagined it. M31 had now risen above the house so I went over there. Oh, very nice! I could easily see 32 and 110 in their proper spots. I had seen them in the SCT but the field of view was much narrower so once couldn’t grasp the whole picture.

I waited another half hour or so. I wanted to see the Double Cluster and it had not yet risen from behind the house. While doing so, I just looked at random star fields in the Milky Way. I was a bit dismayed to see that the 34mm Siebert was giving me unacceptable star blurring along the outer quarter or so of the field of view. I was quite upset, this has been my favorite eyepiece! (Note to those who’ve found this by googling, read on to the second light report, the 34mm Siebert is fine...)

I did a GOTO the Double Cluster and pretty much watched the edge of the roof disappear. That was actually a bit of fun, you could get a sense of slow motion of the skies. Once they both cleared I had a tremendous view. Again, like with M81/82 one could fully frame the objects against the background stars, things weren’t as crammed together.

I sadly packed up, happy with the new telescope.

I purchased a Chesire on astromart and set up the scope in the kitchen. It was very easy to collimate it. It didn’t seem to be out of collimation at all so I uncollimated it and then re-collimated it. At least I half collimated it! You, once I put the diagonal in, it was out of collimation again. So I tried another diagonal, it was also out of collimation by the same amount. I may need to shim the focuser (or something, pretty much whatever Steve Forbes of Trapezium Telescopes suggests) to get that centered. I don’t think the diagonal is out of collimation since I saw the same error with 2 different diagonals.

8 days later I was able to try the skies again. There was a first quarter moon so I decided to do lunar and Jupiter observing. From my last session I knew that the cars were annoying even though I was looking at bright objects, so I put up the screens. (Side note, I still have tons more design work to do on the screens, they are effective, but not as easy to install as possible and the tolerances are too tight, the tarps are stretching and I’ve pulled out some grommets already.)

Once everything was setup I still had some time to kill, so I pointed at the moon. This was the signal for the clouds to roll in. You could see the moon, but just as a bright blob. I tried again as the evening wore on. Eventually the skies were clearing with a sharp line coming from the north west. I could see the glow of Arturus so I use that as an alignment star. (Polaris wasn’t visible but I have true north marked on my lawn with 3 sections of PVC embedded in the ground.) I was slewing towards Mizar when it disappeared, so I just “accepted” its coordinates. Then I grabbed Vega for a calibration star. The moon was completely socked in so I went back to Mizar, which was now visible, grabbed it and then to M51. It was an exceptionally dim spot. The moon was really messing with the viewing. I tried for a few more dim things in that area but gave up and just waited out the moon.

I used the Siebert 22.5mm Ultra, both barlowed and not at 44x and 89x, and the 9mm straight @ 111x. I tried the 9mm barlowed (222x) but the skies didn’t permit it. I looked at it for about 45 minutes I think. I particularly like see the long shadow from the central peak in the Alphonsus crater. (I used Astronomist on my Palm PDA for the crater map.) I tried so hard to see the shadow move, never did. There was as a pair of mountain peaks over by where Plato is, perhaps they were from the rim of Plato. They were stick up into the sunlight. The skies were boiling. I sat and and watched and sat and watch and the atmospheric motion never stopped. Like the shadow in Alphonsus, I really wanted to see the sun move down the slopes of these mountains.

The clouds had cleaned up by now so I headed over to Jupiter. A quick look showed that the skies were still active. I only saw 3 moons. I whipped out Astromist and sure enough, Ganymede was occulted and then eclipsed. I never did look up to see if the GRS was visible, the skies didn’t permit it anyhow. I could recall how nice Jupiter looked the previous time, this wasn’t even close.

I next headed up to M27, it was easy to find but I could not make out the lobed appearance. I had seen that before with the SCT using a UHC filter. I tried that and it didn’t help. I’m guessing the moon brightness was still messing with what I could see. I had a nice star field here so I started playing the the two Siebert eyepieces and the University Optics 55mm Plossl. I was trying to learn three things: 1) how bad was the blurring in the 34mm Observatory, 2) did the 22.5mm Ultra have the blurring, and 3) would I use the 55mm Plossl ever?

The first question was easy to answer. I’m not sure what I was seeing before but the 34mm did not sure any of the blurring I saw before. I was quite pleased by this. The same was true of the 22.5mm Siebert, the views were great.

When I put the 55mm in it seemed that the views were sharper than with the 2 Sieberts, but the magnification was so low that I’m not sure I found the view better. I wasn’t able to evaluate the eyepiece for contrast. I also didn’t like the huge eye relief nor do I like the blackouts. I’m still thinking of selling this eyepiece but I’m not sure. I sometimes wonder if I’m not experienced enough to use it.

I looked at some DSO in Sagitarius, trying to work my way over to M8 and M20, but they both required a meridian flip so I put off those slews. There wasn’t anything to write home about so I did do the flip.

I visited the moon again, it was just about to set into the trees, so I wanted to check out that shadow and the 2 mountains again. They had not changed at all. So I guess this means that over an hour or two one cannot see changes on the Moon. Well, I’ll keep on trying. I know I’ve seen changes on a crater rim with binoculars, but I don’t know how much time had passed between sightings.

I next go to M8, the Lagoon Nebula. It wasn’t impressive until I put the UHC in. Wow! Not as nice as M42, of course, but this was delightful. I do think it was dimmer, but only by a bit, than the view in the SCT.

M20 was a disappointment, it was dim and featureless. I can’t recall what it has looked like in the SCT so I’ll have to wait for another time to make that comparison.

I next went down to M7, one of my favorite clusters, and just enjoyed it for a bit. I did try the 3 eyepieces but basically just looked and enjoyed.

Before shutting down for the night, I de-clutched everything and went back to Jupiter. (I didn’t want another meridian flip, it just takes too long.) Hey Ganymede was back! That was nice to see. Like Rags, I also saw a fifth “moon” now but I’m pretty sure that that was a star. I did a bit of reading after seeing the fifth one and seeing Rags’ report. I don’t see any evidence that we should have been able to see a moon. (But it would have been cool if we did!)

Overall I’m quite pleased with the Burgess, to the point I’m thinking of selling the SCT. The only thing it gives me over the Burges is aperture and some will argue that with the central obstruction of the SCT subtracting, the Burgess doesn’t lose all that much. I must say I was disappointed by M20. I’m looking forward to see it with an 8” SCT at the same time as I see it with the Burgess. Selling the SCT has some big financial advantages, not only would the OTA but sold but the Crayford, the 2” diagonal, and the dew controller and strips. Shoot, I could even sell the Telrad since I don’t need two of them.

And of course, that could fund a bigger refractor.... :- )

The Moon and the Pleiades

I just finished up my viewing of the Moon occulting the Pleiades. If you follow the link you'll also see an excellent graze map! Never seen one of them before.

I had planned to stay in Cambridge, working late, and then cross the river at sunset and observe from Boston's Esplanade. But, around 6pm clouds rolled and and I wasn't going to stay late for nothing, so I came back to my crash pad in the Savin Hill area of Dorchester for a night without star viewing. You see, we're on the north east side of the hill, the west is obscured by houses above us!

I was quite pleased to see, from a west facing window, that I could see the moon! I quickly grabbed the binoculars. It was still twilight and at 7:38pm I could make out 3 of the 7 sisters. The moon was in the field of view of them.

I checked again at 8:01pm and I could make out 6 stars now, but the moon was getting perilously close to a neighbors house, and worse, the heat plume from his chimney!

By 8:07 I still could only see 6.

At 8:23 the moon was behind the house and I figured, what can the neighbors do? Call the cops? I'll show them the moon! So I went outside and was pleased to see that through a large gap in the trees I could see the show and, more importantly, not be seen as looking into someone house!

I only counted 13 stars in the Pleiades. This is pathetic. I had thought that Manchester was bright but Boston is really, really bad. Auriga had only 4 stars to the naked eye. Castor and Pollux had only 3, plus Mars. I tried to find M36, the eaisest of three clusters in Auriga, I found all my pointers but the cluster was not to be seen.

Maybe I'll take back what I said about city observing being fun. I guess I should say that small city observing is fun. Boston viewing in pathetic.

Messier Marathon practice

In preparation for the Messier Marathon at Larry's house, I wanted to run a practice one, too see what setup is like, to see how long it takes to get align from when the first stars come out until you get your first slew.

I setup on the 3rd floor deck at the apartment in Provincetown. I knew it would be wobbly and I knew I'd have light pollution problems but I figured I'd give it a try, why not? I had a black fleece to use as a hood if I needed it.

Sirius was the first star out, of course, and then I think Procyon and soon I had several. Sadly, I did not have Polaris! I eventually found it binoculars and this let me see it naked eye. I moved the tripod and stood behind it, eyeballing Polaris. I never did it through the bore, I was in a hurry, I knew that some dusk objects would be difficult, I was especially worried about M77.

So althought that wasn't the first object on my list, I used McNish's site to print out my lists, using the Phil Harrington, Astronomy 2002 sequence.

The horizon was still in twilight when I slewed to M77. Now I knew my Goto could be off, especially my first one of the evening, but I couldn't even seen Menkar, so I knew it would be bad. For some reason I put the hood on, then I pulled up my chair and waited. I probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for M77. Sometimes I'd stay in the same spot, sometimes I'd nudge the hand controller to move the scope a bit. When I could see the power lines through the finder scope I knew I should give up. The sky still wasn't dark yet so I moved on.

M42 and M43 were the first objects. Well, M45 was but I wanted to bag at least one naked eye so I knew I'd have to wait for that one. For almost all objects I was using my Garrett Optical 30mm wide angle 2" eyepiece. This give about 1.2 degreess field of view. I wasn't using the Siebert, I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to use an eyepice that I was quite familiar with? I dunno. Anyhow, did us the 22.5mm Siebert to pull in M43.

Then the fun start. I slew to the next object, check it off, repeat. If I knew I could grab an object with binoculars, I would. Why not, it was both fun and probably faster than slewing.

Look up an object, slew, check it off. I know, I know. MM purist will say it wasn't a real marathon. You know what? I don't care, I'll still buy you a beer some day. That's ok. I was enjoying myself for the most part.

Why "for the most part?" Well, this was too easy! MM is supposed to be a challenge and this wasn't a challenge at all. Slew, view, check off, repeat. It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!

I'm not going to recount all of the objects, but here are some of the ones I made notes on:

• M76 - hard!
• M48 - impressive. This was with the scope. I had had this as a binocular goal object this fall but I was foolishly feeling time pressure so I just slewed to it instead. I must revisit this one!
• M81 - Meridian flip.

I didn't note the time of the meridian flip but it seemed pretty early for me. I now need to use a hood for more of my objects. There were so many street lights I was getting reflections on my glasses!

• M82 - hard. This surprised me, but I guess it had to do with the conditions. Lots of light and I was essentially never dark adapted because of that. M82 should not be a hard object.
• M108 - hard. Needed the hood and averted vision. Since I was so far away from the alignment stars, I realigned on Mizar.
• M97 - easy with the hood
• M109 - hood and averted
• M40 - failed to split with the binoculars

Arghhhh, I was moving my chair and I kicked the tripod, moving it! Oh, Rags will be laughing now. But, I didn't panic, I just realign on one star and the gotos weren't all that bad.

• M63 - a fishing boat started up in the harbor, I'm now getting a very strong diesel smell. Normally, I'd hate that but it fits in with observing from a fishing village.
• M51 - Saw both parts. Feeling less time pressure now I gave this a good 10 minutes looking for more detail with the 22.5mm Siebert. No detail was visible.

M95. Ok, here it goes. The dim spirals. I didn't have anything centered in the eyepiece but I could see something nearby. But that's isn't enough to confirm it for me. My paper chart from TUMOL was useless since I wasn't star hopping. I went inside and fired up Stellarium, that was useless also. I download Carte des Ciel and that didn't help. I was in a bit of bind. You could say that Goto was letting me down. But, Goto is a just a tool like a Telrad or paper chart. I needed to use my tools better. I could see Leo in the sky with Saturn added. Realign! I replaced my alignment stars with Saturn and Denebola. Slew to M95. Dead center, as expected.

• M105 - 2 objects in the eyepiece. The McNish charts say I'll see two, but TUMOL shows 3, but one is dim. Eventually, with averted I saw the third so I confirmed M105.

The Virgo objects were an easy blur. Everyone was dead nuts centered in the eyepiece. I have no problems claiming a find for them. Did I star hop? Nope. Did I learn how dense Virgo/Leo were? Yup. Clearly this wolud be a fun area to explore from a dark site!

• M3 - Hey, it is back. Very nice.
• M83 - I hear church bells. 11pm? Very hard, tried averted and the hood. The tube is almost horizontal but with essentially only the hills and the dunes of Truro I have perfect horizon here. Sadly, I didn't nab it. In retropspect, I may have tried too early, it could have risen some more! Yup, that's it. I just simulated it in Stellarium, I had 2 more hours until it was high.

At this point I considered giving up. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But, I scanned ahead in the list M13 and M92 were coming up. So I kept on going.

• M12 in Ophicchius. It was below the horizon! So were all the Oph objects.

Time for bed.

Well, actually not. The seeing had been great so I put the 9mm in and did some Saturn viewing. Sadly, the 3rd floor deck just didn't work out for this. I was bummed. This was the best seeing I had ever seen for Saturn, oh well, it will still be there later.

I hibernated the scope and left it all outside.

Next morning, I woke it up. Took the Telrad off and put the solar filter on. 2 sunspots!

Totals:

Found with telescope: 55
Found with binoculars: 7
Found with naked eye: 1
Did not find: 3
Obstructed view: 4

Total found: 63

The missed objects were 83, 33 and 77. If I had waited about 10 minutes, 33 would have been an obstructed, not a missed. But there was no way to get it in the twilight.

I was done by quarter after 11.

I'm looking forward to the real one next week. It will be better with friends. Goto will give me the time to observe. Clearly, I was ahead of schedule most of the night. I didn't like the TUMOL printouts, the McNish printout is better for Goto, the descriptions are better.

Truro dark report

Wow, it is dark out here.

I mean, wow, really, freaking dark.

I went to Pilgrim Heights around 8:30 tonight. I'm driving down the access road with my high beams on, having just got off Route 6 with other car's shining their headlights in my eyes. I park the car. I'm not dark adapted at all and I turn off the lights.

Wow, OMG, wow.

It is freaking dark here.

This place is darker than Steve's house, at least when I got there last week and initially wasn't dark adapted. I've not yet opened the door and with the car's dashboard lights on I can tell I'm going to be impressed when I open the door.

Now, let me digress a bit, both as a child and as an adult I've been attacked by a dog. I have a pathological fear of them. There are coyotes on the cape, in these dunes. I chose this site because of the trees, the winds are 10 to 20 mph now with gusts to 30. The house is shaking as I type this. The trees are all around me, I'm parked on just a thin strip of asphalt.

I can't open the door. I don't like being outside in the dark. I hate being alone at YFOS but I manage to do it, but I don't like it. But here? Jim Young isn't just over the hill. I try rolling down the window but that doesn't work well at all. I feel the woods around me, but I know at the beaches I'd feel the dunes around me.

So I open the door and stand next to the car with the door almost closed on me. M35, 36, 37, 38 all there, all with stars. Even M46 is almost bright. M42 is small in the binocs, but I think brighter than I've ever seen it, at least it seemed that way. It is certainly bigger than I've even seen in in these binocs.

Sadly, I know I'm never ever going to be able to use this site, at least not without a partner. Oh well, lets go to the house and see what that is like

The house itself has the front porch light on, casting huge shadows. I don't have a key, shoot, I don't own the house, so I can't do anything about it.

But I find the same objects. Trees are a problem at the house. NW is pretty bad but there aren't any leaves yet so I can see all the objects easily. I turn to try for M46. A car pulls out of the street across from me blinding me with his high beams. I lift the binocs and scan, there's M47 and M46 is right next to it. No problems with that.

Ok, so that's the answer. I put some pipes in the ground as foundations and I build some light screens and I do all my observing from right here. It is hard to tell but our house may be darker than YFOS.

I head back to Provincetown and get out on the deck. There are sodium vapor lights shining in my eyes. I try for M46. Yeah, got that too from P-town.

This is gonna be a good place to live.

No Boxes tonight, or, a dark site with the binoculars

Steve and Rags cajoled me into heading over to New Boston to have one lest viewing session with them before the move. I knew I shouldn't, I was way too tired and the boxes were calling my name. But, I did anyway. I really wanted to get a dark site view of the recent M-objects I had been observing so I could take that to Truro.

So although I had my scope in the car, I only carried my parka, chair, and binoculars out behind Steve's shed.

Rags was cursing the Goto Nova, not that there was anything wrong with it, but Rags just doesn't like GoTo scopes. I felt pretty bad when I tripped over the power and his alignment was lost, but it turns out that that was not the first time that had happened that evening already!

So Rags and I got some quality binocular time in. I should him how to find M36, M38 and M37. Those were the easy ones. M35 was a bit harder, pointing out "that star there" really doesn't work all that well sometimes, but he got it.

Somewhere in here Steve's Atlas is giving him fits and he disappears inside, trying to google something to fix it.

Then we get down in earnest trying to find P17, Comet Holmes. The Comet Chasers web site was still claiming that it was naked eye visible, so I figured with binoculars it would be a cinch. I had failed 2 nights running to grab it from Manchester. I knew that section of the sky pretty well. I got out the charts and we start looking for it. Both Rags and I tried both my 15x50s and Rags' 7x30s (???) as well as the 4" Jaeger refractor. Nothing! Steve comes back out and tries also. We spent a good 45 minutes on this. We know is going to be huge and dim but we are just not seeing it.

Steve realigns the Atlas and we poke about, finding the Flame Nebula, but not the Horsehead, not that we expected to, and the Owl Nebula. Wow, that was a dim one! I'm not looking forward to that at all during the Marathon!

I had to call it an early night, the alarm was going off at 4:30, the boxes were calling to me.

Just because you didn't see anything new doesn't mean you failed

So after checking out the Comet Chasing website I decide to grab Comet Holmes tonight from Manchester and then after that easy grab, I'd enjoy 46P/Wirtanen passing by NGC 1893. I knew that that would be dim but I'm getting so good at this it would be a piece of cake.

I went outside right around 7:30pm, watched the sky turn from a turquoise Maxfield Parrish blue sky into night. I found Mirphak and it was clear the sky was too bright so I waited a bit.

This was a gonna be a tough hop. From Mirphak I found the box of 5 stars around it, so then I could rotate my paper chart. Then to the left to a pair then up to a bright one (Delta Persei I guess), then curve around down to the next bright one then up to yet another bright one. Phew, now we are getting close. Find the next one and almost bisect them up to a double, three dim ones.

And I looked and waited. It was hard. I didn't want to put the binocs down because all my neighbors lights would ruin what little dark adaption I had. I waited and looked.

I closed my eyes and went in a got a pillow so I could lay down. I could find the spot again and again but no Holmes.

I checked the charts and saw that I was slightly off so I looked in the new spot.

I spent about 45 minutes, giving up around 8:15pm. I briefly went over to NGC 1893 just because when I looked for M38 the other day I saw some patterns that I thought might be something. I found them again but they didn't match the website that had a description by Walter Scott Houston: "contains a conspicuous Y pattern formed by four 8th magnitude stars." I thought I saw a T in the right spot, but certainly not a Y.

And 46P was, of course, no where to be seen.

All in all it was a good time, even though I didn't bag anything.

PS: about an hour later I briefly went outside too take a quick check on 1893 again. It was a lot darker now! I wasn't able to stay but that may have been my problem with Holmes. Clear Sky Clock is looking ok for tomorrow night, I'll try then also