Kast Observations, May 2013 (Night 3)

Tonight we will be focusing on our dimmer stars (Vmag~13-14), and thus will be observing fewer targets. It looks like we're going to have a full 4 nights of fair-weather observing (practically unheard of at Lick!). Tonight's seeing is ~0.7 arcseconds.


Since tonight is more of the same targets from the last two nights, and we're dealing with long integration times, I decided to have a little constellation fun with the Lick All-Sky Camera. This camera is used so that observers in the control room can see the weather outside (used for looking for clouds, position of the moon, etc). These images are posted on the Lick webpage and updated every two minutes. Here's what it looks like outside right now:

And with some added constellation tracings:

Oops - a plane!

The Milky Way on the rise...

Seeing tanked around 1am, and clouds rolled in at 5am, effectively ending out observing night early. Tomorrow's forecast isn't promising, but we'll do our best!