{"id":5036,"date":"2005-12-03T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2005-12-03T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=5036"},"modified":"2012-06-30T15:19:33","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T01:19:33","slug":"2005-sentinel-schwaar-star-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=5036","title":{"rendered":"2005 Sentinel-Schwaar Star Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the first cold weather of the year I planned a trip to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkerview.com\/sites\/sentinel.php\">Sentinel<\/a>, one of our favorite winter observing sites. The site features dark skies and good company. The forecast was for clear skies, so Saturday afternoon I packed up <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=2921\">my big dob<\/a> and headed down the freeway.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_5037\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5037\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=5037\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5037\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/gaze01-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Dob Silhouette\" title=\"Dob Silhouette\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-5037\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5037\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steve Dillinger&#8217;s 20&#8243; Dob awaiting full dark at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkerview.com\/sites\/sentinel.php\">Sentinel, AZ<\/a> with Venus and the Moon shining behind<\/figcaption><\/figure>The sky started a little rough, with high cirrus and contrails scarring the blue lit by the the glow of sunset. The thin crescent Moon and Venus were gorgeous among the bright gold wisps. Shortly after dark these annoyances quickly cleared leaving a clean sky. Seeing was soft all night, transparency was decent, but poor at low altitude as views into Fornax or lower demonstrated.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_5038\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5038\" style=\"width: 150px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=5038\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5038\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/gaze04-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Violet Awaiting\" title=\"Violet Awaiting\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-5038\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5038\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author&#8217;s setup awaiting a dark December sky with <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=2921\">Deep Violet<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>I counted over 20 vehicles a little before sunset, but a least 10 more rolled in at sunset or just after. After a few hours there was a steady rate of departure as the cold night took its toll on Arizona observers.<\/p>\n<p>I spent the first half of the night touring old friends and a couple new objects, but was basically killing time waiting for H400 objects to rise. After midnight the objects I had been waiting for had risen high enough to appreciate properly and I started to work, cleaning out Pyx, Lyn and Pup of a few remaining H400 objects as well as chewing on western UMa a little. It looks like I have 28 objects left, almost all in UMa, the end is in sight!<\/p>\n<p>Around 0300 the breeze had become a steady cold biting wind and I finally packed it up and pulled out. I had already had around nine hours of good observing so I can call it a success. I wasn&#8217;t the last, there were at least two observers still going when I pulled out.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5039\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5039\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=5039\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5039\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/gaze03.jpg\" alt=\"Telescope Line\" title=\"Telescope Line\" width=\"600\" height=\"233\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5039\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5039\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The telescope line at Sentinel for the 2005 Sentinel-Schwaar Star Gaze<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the first cold weather of the year I planned a trip to Sentinel, one of our favorite winter observing sites. The site features dark skies and good company. The forecast was for clear skies, so Saturday afternoon I packed up my big dob and headed down the freeway. The sky started a little rough, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=5036\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2005 Sentinel-Schwaar Star Gaze&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[525,331],"tags":[2108,60,527],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}