Montebello Observing Report
By Mike Shade

The weather gods smiled on Bay Area amateur astronomers Wednesday night as they kept the clouds and low fog away from all telescopes set up at the Montebello Open Space. It was a nice clear night with little dew and only slight breezes. While the temperature was a bit cool for late July, none of the dozen or so observers present seemed to mind. There were a number of telescopes present: the Vixen Fluorite twins (4" refractors), a Questar 3.5, a 6" Cave Newtonian, a Meade LX200 (8"), a very nice homemade 6" f/9 Dobsonian, a 6" Intes, and numerous binoculars. It was fairly dark for a location so near town. I was using my new 4" Vixen Fluorite refractor, a telescope that has become my favorite. I had no real agenda, so I decided to spend some time looking at globular clusters. First on the list was M4 and the 4" showed the characteristic "central bar" and there was a scattering of pinpoints at the center at 131X (7mm). Compared to M4, M107 was something of a disappointment. It was dim, small, and showed no hint of resolution. While in the area I also looked at the planetary nebula NGC 6309. This object is listed at about magnitude 11 and it took the LX200 to confirm that I was indeed seeing this object. At 131X, it was elongated, small, and dim. After this difficult object, the globular cluster M9 was easy. At 131X, it was in a nice field and looked grainy, as if a few more inches would resolve it to the core. NGC 6342 was in the same field as M9 and while it was smaller, it did form a nice pair. Next I looked at the little globulars near M8 (NGC 6553 and 6444?). They both fit into the field at 35X (26mm). The globular NGC 6356 was even in brightness at 131X while the globular cluster M2 was very nice at 131X, being resolved around the edges. To wrap up the evening Jupiter presented itself. The seeing seemed to limit the view, but much detail was seen for brief periods at 131X. The final object of the evening was Saturn. While the atmosphere was even worse for this object than Jupiter it did show well at 131X with the Cassini division being seen on occasion. Overall not a bad night and I went home about 1am or so.