Excellent though Cold night at Pawnee
Last evening I drove out to the Pawnee National Grasslands near Briggsdale, CO to meet some astronomy friends at a semi-dark site. It was pretty cold, temperature around 10 degrees, but fortunately not much wind, only 1-2 mph most of the time, occasionaly 5. We were all well dressed for the cold, but 6 hours at low temperatures made everyone wish for another layer or two. We knew early on that the air was pretty steady when we took a look at M46 and planetary NGC 2438. Though quite low in the south, there was no scintillation at all. We each spent the evening logging objects on our target lists. I believe everyone visited 20-30 objects which is always much easier to do with clear, dark skies. Around 10 we stopped deep sky viewing to take a look at Saturn. It was absolutely amazing! Brown bands on the disk were very visible, the Cassini division was absolutely sharp and crisp – no sign of movement in fine detail even at the high powers. The air was as transparent and steady as I have ever seen. I’d rate the turbulence around 9/10, which is extremely rare for this area. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring along my notebook and webcam as I thought it would be too cold for the notebook and too breezy to do much imaging anyway. We all packed up at moonrise shortly after 11, cold but very happy.