MDM Observatory 1.3m Telescope Observer's Report for 2004 Jan 12

Observer(s): Tuttle, Armstrong
Institution(s): Columbia

Instrument: Templeton/Direct

Worked for 13 hours (all night)
Conditions were Mixed most of the night.
No equipment or software problems were encountered.

Seeing and Weather:
   Clouds all night.
   Beg: Seeing 1.8 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   Mid: Seeing 1.6 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm
   End: Seeing 2.0 arcsec, Patchy Clouds, Winds Calm

Observing Summary:

Clear and perfect, right up until we started observing.
The seeing got nice in the middle of the night. Not much
in the way of clouds in our patch of sky. Noisy data.
Your last poem for a while...

'Fading'

The sun just now adjourned below the neverending blue
And shaded in with lavendar the outlines that it drew.

It paints with misty water colors, gleaming quite surreal.
They smooth the land, and layered slopes of mountain they reveal.

Toward the east, the earth's titanic arc of shadow's set
Behind Kitt Peak - its open domes and gentle silhouette.

Below Forever, rock and treetop tumbles down these hills.
Their greens and browns grow cloaked in gowns of twilight's muting spills.

Soon see a star up North afar, and blinking through the black.
So let's begin the night within our schedule of attack.

Day's been a dry, unblemished sky; good fortune we've avowed.
Yet look up here .. my sight's unclear, but ... might I spy a cloud?


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Submitted on 2004 Jan 13 [6:51:47]