A Peak Experience - September 11 and 12
By Jane Houston

Friday, September 11...A southern horizon, a warm night, a few good friends and a perfect assortment of telescopes. What a great way to start a full weekend of observing on Fremont Peak, just up the road from San Juan Bautista!

We began our evening by rolling off the roof of the 30 inch F4.8 Challenger telescope in the Fremont Peak Observatory, setting up the binos, and then attempting to align the DSCs, and then ended up starhopping, or mostly planet hopping till the moon obliterated the darkness, and everyone got sleepy or headed for home. I set up my two scopes, 12.5 inch LITEBOX reflector, Strider and 6 inch reflector, Red Dwarf on the flat gravel area in front of the observatory.

I brought my Rainbow Optics Star Spectroscope with good intentions of trying it on the 30 incher, as a possible future program for the public, and ended up just using the spectroscope on the 6 incher. As it got closer to startime, my friends Robin and Chris arrived, with her C-8, and loaded to the gills with projects for the evening - a into the starfields and clusters of Sagittarius to complete her Messier catalog hunt of this area. Soon Jeff Blanchard arrived with his 14.5 inch Starmaster. David and Akkana showed up with one refractor each to perfectly balance the gathering astro tribe.

And then just to complete the scene, Mark Taylor arrived with his LX-200, complete with a camera, intent on capturing some of this perfect starry night on film. Mark promised to whip up some darn tasty double decaf cafe lattes for us with that LX200. I am pretty sure it slices and dices, too! It kept the animals away, except for one precocious raccoon that explored Mark's car in search of dinner.

Through the spectroscope, we observed Vega's Hydrogen Beta emission line in the visible green of the spectrum, plus Gamma and Delta hydrogen lines clearly visible in the violet and indigo. It is interesting to note that when we observed Deneb, these lines are missing. Why? They are both A-type stars.

Because Vega is a main sequence or dwarf star, and Deneb is a supergiant! At the relatively low pressure and density typical of the outer layers of supergiants, atomic collisions are relatively rare and the spectral lines are consequently much narrower and less prominent. The greater the pressure and density of the gas, the broader and more prominent the lines will be.

We also observed Antares, somewhat too low in the murk, but were able to see the thick black molecular bands in the red end of the spectrum. Terrestrial Water Vapor at 7165 A, and Terrestrial Oxygen at 6867 A. were prominent. Akkana hunted some carbon stars, but when Jupiter rose above the big trees, a leggy chorus line of telescope tubes all swung simultaneously eastward.

From about 9:30 PM till 12:30 AM we watched first as the spot formerly known as red, trailed by a bevy of white ovals and festoons in the SEB swooshed through the field of view in the assorted scopes, on its 9 hour rotation. The phenomenom known as the SEB disturbance, has wreaked havoc in the South Equatorial Belt as of late. The large white ovals and grey or blue festoons were clearly visible in all telescopes.

Gasps were coming from the Observatory. At about 10:20 all attention was directed at the tiny shadow leading the moon Europa. Yes, at first we too thought it might be Io, for being near opposition gave a misleading illusion of nearness. Io is a dark moon. This brilliant pearly white sphere had to be Europa. We all voted for Europa and then Akkana verified it on the computer. Europa is was. It was incredible to watch the shadow take a bite out of the limb of mighty Jupiter, while Europa was still outside the limb, and then the moon and shadow danced slowly together till all we could see was the shadow dancing alone. Thanks to the dark coloration of the SEB, the moon was visible for at least an hour as it transited. Since there were only 8 of us, each got deeply satisfying looks through the Challenger, David's 5 inch refractor and the rest of the scopes. It was a beautiful sight, seeing all those scopes pointed toward the southeast. At one point Chris sat on the ladder, and said "I'm going to sit and visit Europa for a while" The view certainly elicited wonder in our small but appreciative band of shallow sky afficionados. I sketched 4 images of the transit over a two hour period. Akkana sketched the red spot and ovals in a beautiful sketch of the whole planet.

When Saturn also joined the visible ecliptic lineup, the scopes all danced eastward. The Cassini division between the A and B rings was exceptionally clear and vividly black. The C ring or crepe ring is a darkish dusky ring feature we were able to discern, but just barely. We saw 6 moons very easily - or was it 7? These two planets, plus the occasional search into the deep sky kept us happily occupied for many hours. I hope Mark's photos capture some of the magic and electricity happening this evening.

Intermission...Ohhhh, did you feel that?, I asked? Uuhh Huhh, he answered. Ok, I promise no romance novels, but at 12:45 PM on Saturday, we DID feel the earth move, and it was a real earthguake, centered in the Pinnacles National Monument area! 3.2 on the Richter - not much more than a demisemiquaver of an earthquake - yet we clearly felt it and heard it too inside the observatory meeting room. Mag 3.2 at the F4.8 telescope! A little noontime quiver. Ranger Mike confirmed the Richter reading for us Sunday morning as we left.

Mojo and I had never walked to the top of Fremont Peak, and with hours to wait till sunset, we hiked up the hill, climbing over rocks, collecting botanical samples in our shoelaces, listening to scurrying lizards and snakes, and other state park mammalian and reptilian residents, till we arrived at the Peak. The view was breathtaking, and was well worth the hike! We saw the three 1930 survey spikes hammered into the rocky summit, and sat where the first American flag was raised in California - by Captain Fremont, of course!

Turning our heads, we spied the observatory, a lone sentinal on the ridge below us. We looked down at the gathered astronomers in the SW Parking lot but they did not see us. Took a few pictures, and then took the shortcut (read no trail) down.

We stopped at the Southwest Parking lot, visited for a while and left the gathering astro-crowd for the observatory to set up the Challenger for the second night of observing.

Saturday, September 12...I had a little difficulty collimating my scope Friday night, so I enlisted the assistance of Jim Bartolini Saturday night. In exchange for his navigation - "Pick one...no the other way...stop. Now go to another bolt...keep turning...slowly...stop. Next bolt...Perfect...No a little more the other way...stop" help and laser collimator, I paid him with fresh strawberries and raspberries dipped in creme fraiche. And that's not cool whip, either! Washed down with some red grape juice.

Bob Fingerhut also pulled scope duty Saturday night, showing the small but appreciative crowd many gorgeous objects thru the 30 incher after Mojo's talk on Light Pollution. Down on the gravel, I showed the crowd among other objects, B86, Barnard's Inkspot, a nice dark nebula and perfectly round open cluster. Since it is near the Teapot "spout" of Sagittarius, we'll soon say "good by" to this object till next year!

On this night the shadow transit on Jupiter was indeed Io. A midnight walk to the SW parking lot and a tour through the telescope fields yielded many riches, and many friend, including a few new ones. There was indeed quite a gathering of magnificent time machines, and nice people. The giant binos were incredble! Rich and Alan's refractors gave gasping views no matter what object was hunted. And many other scopes, like Peter's 14.5 gave suberb views. I hunted NGC 7635, The Bubble Nebula in at least 6 of these scopes, with some success! This object was the target of many, the success of few. Part of it's charm, I guess.

Back to the ranch, or rather the ranger's house. Jay was hunting dim planetary nebulae. I looked and didn't see two of them. Back up the hill to the observatory, to be greeted by a local family who have been at the observatory every time I've been there - we're friends now, this family and me. A tour of the planets, and few looks through their small refractor, and off they went down the hill home. Then a short and partially successful Herschel hunt through Cetus was enough for me. The bright moon was rising. In a few hours it would be dawn on Fremont Peak. We saw some flashlights illuminating the Peak. Someone was having a midnight moonlight peak experience.