Frost along the Canyon road betrayed the cold temperatures as I
ascended Fremont Peak State Park on afternoon of December 26th.
Pulling into the path leading to the observatory I was stopped by a
locked gate. Now that Rick Morales is gone, the park service has
apparently decided to minimize access to the area behind the Ranger's
house, at least until a replacement ranger is found. Several quick
calls to those folks who might have the padlock combo were
unsuccessful. Oh well, Coulter camp was empty, I would set up my AP
Traveler there.
This was to be a night of equipment testing for the great Australia
trip next Spring. The photographic field flattener finally came for
the Traveler and it was an opportunity to perform aperture tests with
several ultra-wide field lenses for the Pentax 67 camera. I also met
Dave Cooper here who had brought along his Vixen 4" f/9 fluorite
refractor on G11 mount.
At 6:30 pm, the digital thermometer in my equipment bag was reading 30
degrees F. Skies were crystal clear, the air dead calm and dry. The
silence of our surroundings was only broken by the occasional inbound
commercial jet overhead. We quickly slipped into our winter gear and
broke open the hot coffee. The nice thing about simple equipment is
the short setup time. My Losmandy GM-8, AP Traveler and 80mm
guidescope were up and aligned in about 30 minutes. Of course my
gloves were left at home which obviously hastened the assembly.
We expected to have the park to ourselves, but we were soon greeted by
a camper who told us that it would be okay to set up where we were
just as long as we didn't block the road. He was expecting some
friends from Santa Cruz to be arriving later. Oh No!, I thought. Soon
several trucks pulled in near us with about half a dozen folks piling
out with the ubiquitous Dobsonion telescope and boom box.
For the next two and one-half hours David and I were treated to a 200
db Neil Young, retrospective. Not quite the music I would have
selected for an outing under the stars. The winter night silence had
been broken with musical notes echoing across the entire park,
bouncing off my equipment and into my ringing ears. It brought back
memories of the late 60's and early 70's when many of us got started
in amateur astronomy. Back then the Dynascope RV-6 was the Newtonian
of choice and most of us were the proud owners of the Tasco 60mm
refractors with green moon filters that screwed into the barrel of
.965 eyepieces. 500X was possible with barlow lens! If you were
well-to-do you had a Questar or a Vega Maksutov. The Unitron product
line was prominently featured on the back cover of Sky & Telescope. I
remember dreaming about owning the one that was loaded with finders
and guidescopes. These days we are privileged to have at our
disposal such a fine array of equipment. David's 4" f/9 fluorite
proved to be quite a performer as I added the Astro-Physics MaxBright
diagonal and 35mm Panoptic eyepiece to it. With this combination, we
were witness to one of the finest views of M42 that either of us had
seen in a small telescope. Our old Tasco's showed nothing like this,
but then again, this eyepiece and star diagonal combination could buy
ten 60mm Tasco refractors in 1969!
The music played on as I finished my photo runs. The cold
temperatures seem to have effected the electronics in the SBIG
autoguider as I could not get it to stop tracking. Every time I
pressed "interrupt" the device would ignore the command and continue
to track on the guidestar. Now if it continues tracking when I
disconnect it from the battery...
At 11:30 we decided that we had enough of the cold and Neil Young.
But not before we took a quick look at the "Saturn" planetary and
M81-82 with the fluorite. Splendid. Don't tell Roland, but the
4-inch Vixen fluorite has sharper on-axis images than the Traveler.
We packed up even faster than the setup and launched out of the park
towards home. Intergalactic greetings and celestial wishes to
everyone in the New Year.
John Gleason