Posts Made By: Fred Lusk

With a scope:
-- Triple shadow transit on Jupiter in the spring of 2004 with my 5" SCT. This followed a double shadow transit a week or two before.
-- Omega Centauri with a 16" SCT at the Onizuka Visitor Center on Mauna Kea.
-- Omega Centauri from 37°07'21"N through Fresno's light dome with my 5" SCT (I've done this multiple times and also with 10x50 and larger binos and my 8" SCT). One of the reasons I first tried for OC, despite the bad conditions, was that all the old-timers in my club said it couldn't be done.
-- Two satellites crossing at right angles just off the center of M13 in my 5" SCT.
-- Comet Garrard and M71 in the same field of view in my 8" SCT + 13mm Ethos last summer.
-- Pluto in my 8" SCT (several times).
-- Mars when it hit 25" in 2003.
-- The Veil Nebula through a 24" newtonian.
-- Stephen's Quintet through the same 24"
-- And that's just for starters....

Naked eye *and* with binos:
-- A satellite burning up on re-etry over the central Sierra Nevada in 2000 or 2001 while our club entertained about 50 junior college astronomy students. The solar panels were obvious in binos. A club member got on the internet the next day and found out it was a Russian satellite that missed the Pacific Ocean.
-- Several bright comets, dating back to Ikeya-Seki in 1965 and Comet West in 1976.

Naked eye:
-- The 2001 Leonids from a dark site.
-- Seeing the Andromeda Galaxy cresting the horizon from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park.
-- A fireball so bright it cast shadows at our high-elevation observing site at Courtright Reservoir. Meteorite hunters concentrated their search around Florence and Edison Lakes, but I don't know if they found anything.

Anytime with any means:
-- Our own moon.

Your friend will be almost dead center for the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, but that's a long wait.

I agree with the others that Lubbock is not well placed for May's annular eclipse. With the sun on the horizon, the views will not be the best. However, if he really wants to go and Lubbock is his best place to see it, then why not?

Like Steve, one of our club members is talking about going to Reno, NV. Several of us are already making plans to drive from Fresno to Redding, CA. We have already connected with the Shasta Astronomy Club and they welcome the additional help.

BTW, www.eclipse-maps.com/ has some really good-looking and detailed maps of upcoming event.

Been there, done that several times. Amway is a money cult and I have ended several friendships because of it.

The toughest situation was the guy who first hired me out of college. He was Managing Engineer (ME) of a 5-engineer office in Fresno. A year later I was transfered to a 15-engineer office in SoCal. He was transfered six months later into the position of Assistant Managing Engineer (AME). One day he popped his head into my office and asked if I was interested in getting some "executive training." Thinking this was work related, I said I was. He said the meeting was at his house after hours the next week. He said it would include about a dozen people and I should bring my wife. This seemed odd, but I was young and naive.

We weren't in his house for 2 minutes when I saw several Amway boxes on his kitchen table. We sat through an hour presentation (given by a podiatrist of all people) about how to get rich, but it was more devoid of specifics than anything I have ever heard, including political speaches. He never even said what we would actually have to do to get rich, only that we could get there by following the "Executives Unlimited" program. Fortunately, we brought our newborn daughter with us. One look from me was all it took to get my wife to get my daughter crying. This gave us our out to leave. My AME said he would call me to get my reaction. I was seething, but didn't say anything.

When he called the next night, I read him the riot act for half an hour, telling him how unethical I thought his behavior was and how unethical I already knew Amway to be. I told him never to do that do me again or even mention it. I wasn't sure how far I could press it, but I told him if he uttered one word about to me I would rat him out to the ME and the Regional VP. Interestingly, he honored my demand and even seemed to respect me more. The same cannot be said for all the other people in the office I found out he had approached. I lost all respect for him after that encounter.

I once saw the Veil through a 24" Newtonian and it looked like a twisted silk scarf, there was so much detail. And that was w/o an OIII. I could have looked at it for hours, but there was a line behind me.

In my 8" SCT, it's M8, M17, and M42 that show the most structure. I see some structure w/o an OIII and quite a bit with the OIII. Under excellent skies, the North America and Rosette Nebulas and the brightest parts of the Veil Nebula show some structure with an OIII. I'm probably forgetting a couple more.

Done....but in my own words.

Sound like fun. We're just 2 hours north of you. On the 21st we (Central Valley Astronomers) will set up for public solar vieweing at Fresno State as part of Vintage Days.

If it's the one reported for about 8:00 a.m., then nope. I was sleeping in from being out at Eastman Lake until 2:00 a.m. We saw several Lyrids between about 10 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., but by far the best meteor we saw was a small fireball around 11:00 p.m. that was heading from SSE to NNW that gave us a nice orange burst below Polaris.

This is our spotted Sun. Olympus E-5 + Celestron CPC-800 + 0.63x focal reducer.

We had much better luck in Fresno, California, than le Gentil did. BTW, I used his story in a presentation about the transit that I gave to my astronomy club last month and later to a group of middle school kids. I told them the moral of the story is that Frenchmen should not chase transits because the risks are too high.

June 4th was cloudy, windy, with scattered showers, but June 5th was clear all day with only a handful of small wispy clouds. It was breezy at times so atmospheric turbulence varied throughout the afternoon. Our club entertained more than 300 people and a TV news crew at Fresno State University. I hogged my scope for both first and second contact, but mostly let the visitors have the scope. I was able to definitively see Venus on the limb at just over one minute after the theoretical time for first contact. On the time lapse photos I took through my other scope I am able to zoom in an see Venus about 15 seconds after first contact. I finally lost the transit about 7:50 PM, or about 25 minutes before sunset, due to a tree and some clouds on the far horizon. Our local astronomy professor didn't check the azimuth for the setting sun against the horizon, so he lost the transit about 45 minutes before I did due to a much closer tree. This is one place where my background in civil engineering and land surveying trumps a PhD in astronomy.

No, but it looks like a great spot. Our club has a weekend every summer at Glacier Point in Yosemite NP (7200') and I have observed several times at a spot adjacent to Sequoia NP (7600'). In addition, I have brought binoculars to Lassen, Death Valley, and Joshua Tree NPs. However, I think Great Basin NP should have darker skies than all the places I have been to.