Sunday December 12th


    Mom, Carrie, and I attend church then head home and pack for our trip.
We leave for an area near clear skies southwest of San Antonio, Texas.

On the trip up there the weather was beautiful...upper 70's and clear blue
skies. We arrived to our location and checked into a hotel, grabbed a bite to
eat at Pizza Hut.

We left for our dark site location in the Bandera region. The skies were
amazingly crisp. I'd never seen the winter skies from that location and was
VERY pleased. It was slightly chilly, but quite nice.

Our setup was perfect...three lawn chairs with blankets. My 8" telescope,
binoculars and cameras ready to go. We saw a few earth grazers. The first left
us yelling in excitement as it crossed 60 degrees of sky, was red in color
and left a long smoky trail. we saw a handful more of the earth grazers, which
was quite a treat.

We few meteors and enjoyed the glorious starry skies. The Milky 
Way crossed through the summer triangle in great detail and the winter milky
was stunning. The nearby small town with its few lights glistened in the
distance. It was like we were hanging between stars...below us faint city
lights sparkled and over our heads the heavens poured out bright stars that took my
breath away.

Just a few degrees above the town stars twinkled ...such a peaceful view.

We viewed the following objects through the scope:
double cluster in Perseus
American Nebula region in Cygnus
Cassiopeia region
Pleiades
Orion Nebula
and the comet Q/2004

There is something about seeing Orion rise above the trees that always
captivates me. The nebula had mostly green tints to it with  a little red. Comet Machholz
was first spotted with naked eye then with the scope as a green fuzzy
star.

           

 

 


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     We went back to the hotel to get some sleep. At 1:30 Carrie and I ventured back out to our chosen spot. It was quite chilly and we had sustained wind speeds of about 20mph, with gusts to 30mph, which made it very cold.  The skies were still nice and crisp.

     We began our counts and took down the numbers every three minutes. At first we were only seeing 3 or 4 per three minutes. Then suddenly the rates went up and we counted as many as 12 in one three minute period! The meteors were very very faint this year. As a matter of fact if our mind started to wander off to other things we could hear the other person see 2 or 3 during that time. We really had to concentrate!!!! There were several possible meteors that we didn't count because they were just too faint to be sure we actually saw a meteor. We only saw one sporadic during the event and it was a nice one. There were a few bright Geminids mixed in the shower, but most were very faint. Carrie's count was 154 during the 1 hour 15 minute period we did counts. Mine were 113 because I was playing with my camera's a lot of the time.

     The next day we went into San Antonio and had a blast:) You can see San Antonio pictures here. It was an awesome trip:)

Thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!!!!



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