While many TAC members were sitting in their warm homes this last weekend, some of us were out doing "real" astronomy! John Hales and myself made a trip to Chew's Ridge. This location is a little over 5000' and is home of the MIRA observatory. From my home here in Boulder Creek, it took me about 2.5 hours and this was with the bed of the truck full of telescopes and water and pulling my pop up tent trailer. While the initial portion of the drive was pleasant, the dirt road up to the observing site was pretty rough and severely wash boarded.

I had to spend some time aligning the optics of the 18", more than usual. Since we arrived somewhat late in the afternoon, we had to hustle to set up camp and the telescopes. I had brought the well-traveled NGT-18 for visual work and planned to do some photography with the 4" Vixen fluorite. As darkness fell, the wind began to pick up. By 11 it was roaring pretty good. Observing was impossible with the 4" and even the 18" was being blown around quite a bit, with estimated gusts to 40 mph. So, cussing and swearing at our bad luck (I do believe Hales combined swear words with a delicacy seldom seen among amateur astronomers except under conditions such as these), we decided that further attempts at optical astronomy were pointless. So, for about an hour we watched the meteor show and compared this location to others. There is a slight light dome to the north, extending perhaps 15 degrees but is not at all intrusive. Soledad and Greenfield lie to the east and there is a definite glow in that direction. The south and west are pretty dark. We both agreed the location is better than Fremont Peak, even with the fog covering the lights but not as good as the Mendocino location. I would rate Mendocino as excellent, Chew's Ridge as very good/good, and Fremont Peak as fair.

Saturday dawned bright and of course windy. During the evening a few folks from the Monterey astronomy club showed up. They brought up a new 10" equatorial Meade, a 10" LX200, and a new Celestron Ultima 9 1/4 SCT. As darkness fell, the wind died down enough to give us some hope of getting some astronomy done. Sure enough, it did not gust as severely as Friday night but there were still periods of annoying breezes. In addition, the temperature had dropped considerably, necessitating a trip to the camper to put on my cold weather suit.

Since the seeing was not good enough to do planetary work, I decided to concentrate on deep sky objects instead. First was the 14th magnitude NGC 6194, a small round point of light. It was sort of amazing how easy this object "popped out" from the background stars. Next was NGC 6181, a large galaxy that showed a hint of a dust lane at 196X (10.5 mm). NGC 6160, another galaxy looked textured at 196X. Next on the list was the pair of colliding galaxies NGC 6052/6052A. The second galaxy of the pair was seen with difficulty at 293X (7mm) and was very dim, and seemed to pop in and out with variations in the seeing. For a change of pace, I looked at the planetary nebula NGC 6058. This was distinctly green in color at 293X, with some darker areas in the actual ring. Now it was time to study Stephan's quintet, the little cluster of galaxies near NGC 7331. With 293X, I could make out all five of the main members, but this was difficult due to the poor seeing conditions. I also hunted for several of the small dim galaxies near NGC 7331 and found for sure NGC 7340 (mag 14.9), 7335 (mag 14.7), and perhaps NGC 7337 (mag 15.7). This last one was tough and I would log it as a probable. Next was NGC 16, 23, and 7137, all galaxies, small and faint.

By this time the wind had picked up, and I was wearing down rather quickly. Although the first night was a waste, the second night was fun, even if I "just" had to use my eyes.