Walter's LogBook
	Mon/Tue, December 25/26, 2000

Christmas Day Eclipse

I observed the eclipse from inside the house with both a pinhole projector (shown below) and, for a direct view, a piece of #14 welder's glass. The temperature outside was -20C so observing inside was much more comfortable.

Left:	Pinhole projector setup in the kitchen. The jar of peanut butter and the roll of duct tape serve to keep Santa's back at the proper angle for optimum solar viewing! The white piece of paper increases the contrast of the projected image.
Inset top	The pinhole assembly.
Inset bottom	Maximum phase as displayed by the projector.

Christmas Day Night Eclipse

I imaged from the Old MacDonald farm tonight. I set up the scope just outside the south-facing kitchen window and ran the camera cables into the house to the laptop just inside the window. Using this arrangement, I could reach through the window to operate the computer during focusing. Unfortunately, the telescope was just a bit too far away to run the keypad cable in through the window, so I had to stay outside in the (-20C!) cold with the telescope! I will fix this on my next trip up here by running a 50' phone cable in and using ECU to nudge the telescope during the exposures!

After kicking off the night with some visual variable star observing, I imaged the faint galaxy IC 356 in Camelopardalis. Not a particularly hoopy galaxy it turns out, but it was in the right place in the sky at the right time, so I imaged it (pretty much the same reason I imaged M32 last year!).

At 23:06, cloud rolled in -- eclipsing the sky. By 00:30 it was clear again, so I went out and did some more variable star estimates. At 01:16 cloud rolled in again (yet another eclipse!). There were some more holes that went by but nothing usable (is this what they mean by holy night?!). At 04:30 I finally gave up and went to bed.

IC 356	55 minutes (55 x 60s)
IC 356 in Camelopardalis (10" f/6.3 LX200)