Augh!!! I was teased!

[Kn4fty]

Finally a beautiful night that I didn't have to work! I stepped out of the house and wow! I've never seen my Bortle 4 skies look so nice! Milky Way stretched all the way from the south to North past Cassiopeia. More stars than I've ever seen at this location in the 3 years I've lived here! Even the Andromeda Galaxy was naked eye with averted vision. Just a beautiful sky! I take Copernicus (8" newt) out and set up for the night. Now when I set up I set up! There are marks where I place the mounts legs to quicken my polar alignment. A comfortable chair in case I need one. A small table that holds my EP case and clipboard with log sheets. I even brought Kepler (10x50s) out. I tend to set up for the long haul. Doesn't take long to set up really. Maybe 10 minutes. I had planned my night with a load of targets. M72, m73, Neptune, Uranus, 21p, Juno, Pleiades. I was ready to go! First on my list...m72. I dial in the coordinates and ..... Nothing. Did a slight search and saw a barely perceptible smudge. Averted vision revealed the 4 main stars of m73. Hmmmm something isn't right. This should be quite obvious in the scope with a magnitude of 9.14. I start hop to the location for m72 and search.....and search.......and search until.... What was that? Something occasionally stellaring where it should be...yep that's it. This too should of been obvious. Now I'm getting concerned. I turn to Neptune. This turned into another long search. I found my land marks that lead me to it's location. But where was it? It's not there! Oh wait....what was that? An almost nearly eye squinting stellaring object again! Grrrrr....curses! I've seen Neptune before, so I know Copernicus can handle it. What is the deal?!? My next target, Uranus, won't be in a good position for a bit, so I pick up Kepler and start just scanning and enjoying some gorgeous star fields. I figure I would scan for 21P to see if it's visible in the binos. Nope, just stars. Finally I go back to Copernicus to look for Uranus. Well, once again, no luck! I think to myself "Well fiddlesticks! What is going on tonight!" As I'm thinking this, I notice the sweat pouring down my forehead and my shirt is soaked. Grrrrr, it's the humidity! That's what is killing my viewing session! Tonight's humidity is 81%! The universe was being a big tease!!!! How else could I explain the gorgeous skies and the lousy views! Oh, did I mention all the cars that kept going by? So many cars came thru during my session that I was getting aggravated. Finally I realized I wasn't meant to observe tonight, so I packed everything up. I figured it was the best thing to do. Especially since I hadn't slept since yesterday. Robby is a grumpy boy when he's sleepy sleep . I should of figured earlier that I was getting cantankerous when I hollered at one of the cars "Shouldn't all you people be in bed so you can work in the morning, or does this town just have a ton of slackers!!!!" 

Well the moral of the story is just because the sky looks great doesn't mean its scope friendly.

Oh well, tomorrow night is another night and the humidity is only supposed to be 61%!

Goodnight all,

Rob 

AKA the cantankerous one.

[MarsG76]

I'm sure you said more than "fiddlesticks".. haha

So the mirror wasn't fogged up or the mirror wasn't all but the small opening capped????

[Stu]

What shame, life can be a pain at times. Strange that the stars looked good with the naked eye? Was your scope fogged up with the humidity?

[domstar]

That was last Autumn for me- every time. Hope that's not a rule.

[RobertI]

Shames about the skies, an entertaining read anyway.

[Knighty2112]

Yeah, we’ve all been teased with similar skies that promise much with the naked eye, yet transparency through the scope is very poor. Peak and troughs in the life of this hobby of ours alas!  

[Kn4fty]

I did check everything to see if anything was fogged up. All my mirrors we're clear. The only thing fogged up was the primary lense of the finder scope. Even checked collimation. That was good too. Guess it was just one of those things.

Rob