Observing Notesfrom the Tuckahoe IrregularsDoug Miller and I with several other friends watched it from Broadkill Beach. Low clouds and fog over the bay prevented us from seeing anything for about the first ten minutes. Then we could see the orange disk of the sun with Venus visible naked eye, but I agree with others that it was hard to find in the scope. I had two scopes, TV101 and an Orion 127 Mak on opposite ends of a two-armed Giro-2DX mount, both with Baader filters. The image was definitely better in the refractor. Maybe the Mak still had some temperature issues. The low clouds at our location were finely banded, so at times the image looked like Jupiter with a shadow transit. At one time a jet trail drifted across the face of the sun as an irregular black strip parallel to the cloud bands. That was an interesting visual effect. As others have mentioned, we couldn't really see the teardrop effect either at third contact. I was using the 17 Nagler4 in the TV101 (about 32X) at the time. Maybe it would have been visible at higher mag ... All in all a wonderful observing experience. Only regret - deciding to leave the 20X80 binocs home, especially after Kent's comments. Did anyone see it in Ha? Steve Dexter |