Dam Friday

I was surprised--I expected more people. Andy, Ralph, Jonathan, David, and some people I didn't meet down at the far end with a little ETX--and that was it. The sky started out poor, cleared a little, then started clouding up about 11:00.

We did have a whole bunch of kids with their parents. I had the laptop running Starry Night, and we looked at the Lagoon (M8), the Hercules Cluster (M13) and Albierio. All crowd pleasers in the 10". One little girl proclaimed that Pluto was her favorite planet, "because it's the smallest planet on Earth." When told that M13 is 25,000 light-years away, she asked "If you were an astronaut, is that where your tanks would run out?"

New object: Splinter Galaxy (NGC 5907). With such poor transparency, there wasn't much to see. A fuzzy line with no structure. Need to try again under darker, clearer skies.

The Type 6 13mm with the 6.3 focal reducer works out well on M13. Just about the right combination of FOV (40') and magnification (120x).