Fire in the sky

Too many highlights from the last two days: I don't know where to begin.  Michelle covered a lot in her blog.  A big one from yesterday: we saw a daytime fireball in the sky north of the Grand Canyon at about 5pm!  The fireball track was nearly vertical and very slightly east of north, starting at maybe 50 degrees altitude and descending to about 30 degrees.  It got slowly brighter, dimmed suddenly about 2/3 of the way along its track, then brightened again before winking out.  Very impressive!  It was considerably brighter than Jupiter, which was also visible in the twilight.  I would say it was also brighter than Venus.

Observing from Death Valley was a surprise.  I set up the scope at the Furnace Creek airport.  Not too many lights visible, though there was one annoying sodium vapour yard light off to the north.  Also, some white light came on periodically from a shed.  Still, not too bad in terms of local light pollution.  I expected dark skies, but the skies at Merritt are considerably darker.  The light dome from Las Vegas rises quite high in the eastern skies and there was a much fainter glow to the southwest that might have been LA but that a local claimed was the China Lake weapons range.  That said, Andromeda was directly overhead and I could see much farther out along its disc with my 7x50 binoculars than I recall seeing before.  Unsurprisingly, the dust lanes were not as easy to see in the 120mm refractor as what I'm used to with the 10" or 15" dobs.  There was a lot of turbulence early in the evening, partly due to some hazy clouds that formed as the rain from the previous day evaporated, probably partly due to normal temperature changes as night fell.  I only observed until around 9pm.  By then the air was getting somewhat steadier.  I think I was able to see the great red spot on Jupiter by 9pm, whereas at 7pm I could barely make out the equatorial bands.

The colours in Death Valley were quite remarkable, as was the variety of shapes in the eroded rock.

We rose at dawn the next day for the next leg: a quick drive down the strip in Las Vegas, then on to the Grand Canyon.  The cost of a room at the Grand Canyon was about three days' budget, so we drove on to Flagstaff after a quick sunset walk along the canyon's rim.  Uncertain about how the Thanksgiving holiday will affect services in El Paso, we got our Mexican car insurance in Flagstaff, before driving on to El Paso.  A random exit from the highway in Phoenix found us our first good meal since Portland.

But now I need to run off so we can cross the border.  The same photos I posted to the blog are also on picasaweb, except some there might have captions.  Ta ta for now!