08:51 – Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month. Barbara’s recovery continues. She’ll continue practicing driving over the next few days before returning to work on Monday. I just got back from walking Colin. It’s 23F (-5C) with a stiff breeze.
Congratulations to our friend Steve Childers, who just completed the Herschel 400 list. Barbara and I started working this list more than ten years ago, but quickly gave up on it. From our light-polluted region and using only a 10-inch telescope, it quickly became obvious that we had no chance at bagging all 400 objects on this list. Even the brighter objects were extremely difficult to see. Steve’s 17.5-inch telescope gave him a chance at bagging all 400 objects on the list, but even with three times the light gathering ability of our 10-inch it must have been extremely challenging, to put it mildly. But Steve’s persistence over the last ten years or so let him get it done. Steve joins a very small group of amateur astronomers who have successfully observed and logged all 400 of these objects.