Image by Clayton Kessler from SSO in Manchester, MI on the night of April 16, 2009.
And as it turns out some of the ACNO group were out at Peach Mt observatory doing that astronomy thing. Here is a email report from the following day:
WOW!!! It was a wonderful night of Comets (3 to be exact), Galaxies (some of which were Arps) and clear skies. Don Fohey, Mike Radwick, Krishna Rao and I were there until mid-night and if we didn’t have to work in the morning we would have all stayed until sunrise! Comets C/2009 F6 (Yi-Swan), C/2008 T2 (Cardinal), and C/2007 N3 (Lulin) were picked off early in the evening and then it was on to our own targets. I heard Don say, that he had seen a number of objects for the first time... way to go! Don!
Mike and I spent the evening hunting down fainter fuzzies and bouncing back and forth between each other’s scopes to see what had the other saying “Cool” or “Sweet!”
Krishna was grabbing some brighter, chunkier stuff with his 80mm Meade ETX espresso machine, which he was testing out for a travel-scope for when he goes abroad this summer. And by the sound of those Meade drives whirling away and his “ooos” and “ahhhs” it sounded like a successful test! If the skies stay nice I will probably be out there again tonight!
Thanks guys for sharing the evening with me!
Clear Skies, Mark S Deprest