Saturday night at the Peak

by Paul Sterngold


This past Saturday night was a very satisfying one for me. It had been too long since I had a full night of observing in such (relatively) good conditions. Using my 13.1" Dob, I started off in Sextans, searching for galaxies. Unfortunately, the sky was rather light in that direction, and I struggled with several galaxies, some that shouldn't have been as difficult as they were (right, Bob?). I managed to find some but eventually became frustrated and decided to try galaxies near gamma and beta UMaj, as that part of the sky was nice and dark.

Also, for the first time, I was using a laptop armed with TheSky. Despite the too-bright display (my notebook-cover red shield was not stopping enough light), I fell in love with it! In fact, it almost felt like cheating, it was so easy. On the laptop, I was able to precisely position the Telrad field indicators over an object and then find exactly the field stars on my scope's Telrad. (Despite this "cheating", dim objects were still no easier to see than before! )

Once I moved to UMaj, the fun really began. I found galaxy after galaxy in around gamma and beta. Even when the laptop battery died, I was very successful with my Star Atlas 2000.0. All in all, I found 40 galaxies that evening that I have not observed before.

Mars was, of course, another highlight of the evening. I brought my 8" f/7 Cave specifically for this purpose, and it didn't let me down. The images occasionally snapped into sharp focus and unveiled quite a bit of detail, especially around Syrtis Major, Hellas, and some other unidentified details that appeared later in the east.

The bolide was another highlight - see my earlier posting.

My eyes literally stopped focusing on the star chart around 2am, so I walked around a bit and chatted, then packed it in and drove off for a truncated night of sleep.

The most important thing that I enjoyed last Sat night was the company. This is a fun, varied, intelligent and exuberant group. The enthusiasm is contagious. Thanks for speaking to me, even after those terrible jokes I made!