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Hi John B, Gary and All,
Gary wrote:
"Lachlan happened across what later was determined
to be the comet. He apparently puzzled over it for a moment, but feeling
the pressure to help entertain his guests and deliver a view of the Blue
Planetary, decided to move on, ..."
Goodness me! I can almost feel his pain. The night Lee was found both Gary Mitchell & I were observing with our 10" Newtonians and we both happened to look at 5189 at almost the same time and also looked through each other's 'scopes. It wasn't just me who missed it by a field-with or so -- it was both of us -- both using DSC.
Gary wrote:
"hopefully there is one still out there yet waiting to have your name tagged to it."
It'd be nice! Tell the truth, when Mel Hulbert & I were doing the investigation leading up to my call to the IAU I was just a tiny bit ticked off that someone with just a year or so behind the eyepiece was seemingly about to rack one up while I have been observing for, shall we say a teensy bit longer ... hmmmm ...
But, that's the way it goes. Both Steve Lee and Peter Williams have logged many, many more hrs than I before they found their comets. In fact Peter Williams just needs an asteroid to complete his set. He has already found a naked-eye nova too.
John & Gary, thanks for the SQM readings -- much appreciated.
They are most interesting and I presume that they are with the old "wide-field" model. I purchased the new model which has a lens providing a much narrower HWHM sensitivity of 10 degrees. FWHM is therefore 20 degrees. It also has an IR blocking filter to take ambient temperature out of the equation and therefore the readings might therefore be a bit different to the older model. I noted that if I pointed it in the direction of Eta Carinae, I got a reading 0.2 higher than a non-Milky Way field.
I took a lot of readings over the 4 nights I was at the MSP (well, it's a new toy isn't it??). In the hope of pursuing some semblance of scientific rigor, every time I used it I took _4_ separate readings. If the Milky Way was close to Zenith, I aimed a little (15 deg) away from it. I never aimed lower than 15 deg away from Zenith (except to experiment!).
My first reading was always discarded (as per the instructions -- in the FAQ sheet). I then averaged the next three. At the moment, the readings are all on my voice recorder and as I transcribe I'll note them and they will appear in an observations post sometime in the future (I've presently got more than 100 _more_ to transcribe on top of the 40-odd already done). The worst reading I got in a cloudless true dark sky (long after astronomical twilight) was 21.38. Between 11pm and 3am It was generally somewhere between 21.60 and 21.75.
The best _averaged_ reading I got was at about 12mn on Friday night/Sat morn which was 21.82. That reading run consisted of 21.85, 21.82, 21.82 & 21.83. 21.7s were pretty common throughout the weekend. I have observed for a total of about 30 nights at Wiruna and over 100 at Mudgee and the Mudgee sky seems to me to be pretty-much on par with Ilford. It would seem to me therefore that the wide-field meter will provide a brighter reading than my spot-type one.
Also confiirms my long-held belief that John's Mudgee (Gratti) site is top-notch!!
Best,
Les D
Contributing Editor
AS&T
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