by Jay Reynolds Freeman
On the first weekend of November, 1999, I accepted an invitation to observe at a friend's private observatory, low in the Sierra foothills, not far from Mariposa, California. I ended up glad I had, not only because of the company and of the chance to spend time in a scenic place, but also because the marine layer, fog, and approaching storm that skunked observing in the San Francisco Bay area that weekend, scarcely affected this inland site. We had high cloud or reduced transparency for a while on both Friday and Saturday evening, but its passage was rapid, and both nights turned out quite good.
I arranged to get off work early Friday, and so managed to beat commute traffic out of town. I had exploited the interior space of my new van by loading not only my C-14 and weekend bag, but also some new paraphernalia: I had a nice roll-up table, not the vinyl-covered card-table sized model that is common, but a larger, nicer, and stronger one featuring wooden slats held in place with cloth webbing, and also a delightfully simple collapsible cot or recliner, that packs smaller than a set of golf clubs and can be ready to sprawl upon in less than ten seconds after picking up the bag it comes in.
I drove south through the Santa Clara Valley, then took the Pacheco Pass road over the hills, and crossed California's Great Valley via secondary road, to Merced. A good secondary road led from that city, the so-called gateway to Yosemite National Park, up to Mariposa, but it was off season for the park, so there was no traffic. I found a good motel room for only $30 (US) per night -- another advantage of off-season -- checked in, and drove on to the site.
The Sun had just set when I arrived, so I hastily set up my Celestron 14. The new table was very handy -- my drill consists of putting out the table first, then using it as a transfer and assembly area for the pieces of the Losmandy G-11. With the containers for that stuff restowed, and the C-14 OTA installed, I then move my lexan-paneled chart box to the table, so I can open atlases without worrying about wind or dew, and use the separate top of the box as a tray to hold small bits and pieces.
Pegasus galloped and flapped high overhead, so the first item on my list was one near Stefan's Quintet: On the previous weekend, I had thought I had located NGC 7320C, a small galaxy a few arc minutes east of the Quintet, but reviewing Digitized Sky Survey images had showed that I had deceived myself. On this night, I had an image in hand, and was anxious to try again. Experienced observers had told me that they required larger aperture than 14 inches to notice this object, and my experience was in agreement: NGC 7320C was not what I would call noticeable through my telescope. But with persistence and a good reference image with plenty of nearby stars, I could detect the elusive fuzzy, as well as several stars within a few arc minutes. At 244x, the little galaxy kept popping into view occasionally; I could see it about ten percent of the time. I never know whether this kind of intermittent sighting is because of chance fluctuations in the numbers of photons falling on my retina, or due to variations in seeing or eye movements, or what, but that kind of experience is very familiar when I am working near the limits of my ability.
I reviewed the Quintet itself, and NGC 7331 and some of its companions, and spent an hour or more chasing faint galaxies and Abell clusters in Aquarius and Pisces Austrinis. Then I noticed high, thin cloud or haze beginning to encroach upon that part of the sky, so I turned to less demanding targets, namely Jupiter, Saturn, and an assortment of autumn and winter open clusters -- Auriga contained many that I had never viewed. Looking at the planets made me realize just how ratty the seeing was, and I did not need the high contrast afforded by moderate magnification for these brighter targets, so I reduced magnification to 98x. Particularly easy were the clusters Do 15, 16, 18, and 20: Persons looking for deep-sky objects that are rather off the beaten track yet still observable in relatively bright sky, even with a good deal less aperture, might try objects from this list. Yet not all clusters in this area are so easy: At 98x, I could detect Berk 17 and 19, but only as diffuse smears -- no stars were visible in either, not even as the granularity that sometimes shows incipient resolution.
The wave of moisture drifted across the sky: For a time it looked as if the night would end prematurely -- Jupiter was sufficiently obscured as to be a challenging deep-sky object -- but there always seemed to be a clear patch somewhere, so I persevered. By the end of the evening, I was chasing Sharpless diffuse nebulae in Auriga, and even had a so-so view of the Horsehead Nebula.
I was tired from the work week and the drive, so I did pack up a bit early, but before I left I took out my 14x70 binocular -- an Orion model -- and looked at a few wider objects. Conditions had improved sufficiently that I could see the both the California Nebula and the portion of Barnard's loop that lies east of Zeta Orionis. The folding recliner was a wonderful platform for this work: The membrane you lie on is slightly hammock-shaped, so your arms, legs and neck have partial support. I was a little tempted to go to sleep there, but decided not to, and drove back to the motel.
The next day dawned clear but deteriorated rapidly. In late afternoon I drove out to the site, just to chat, then announced that I was going back to Mariposa for food, and might come back if the nearly complete overcast cleared. I had not expected to return, but when I finished my meal and stepped outside, there were big breaks in the cloud cover, and when I got back to the observatory, the sky was nearly clear.
My second night's program followed my first -- lots of chasing after objects too faint and featureless to bore you with -- but there were a few interesting ones intermixed. I had never looked at Hind's Variable Nebula before -- that's NGC 1554, near T Tauri. It was very faint, but at 98x I could suspect a patch of nebulosity an arc-minute or so west of the star, and had a more solid view of it with an Orion UltraBlock filter. I also looked for UGCA 92, a very small and faint member of the local group of galaxies. It was not on my charts -- I was using Millennium Star Atlas -- but I had a position for it that was accurate to a few arc-minutes east-west and six north/south (I had recorded the position to the nearest 0.1 minute of right ascension and the nearest 0.1 degree of declination. I had a vague impression of a patch of something within those limits, so I made a sketch of what I saw with respect to a handful of plotted stars. Back home a few days later, I downloaded another Digitized Sky Survey image, and found the galaxy right where I had drawn it, so I guess I have seen it. But that one is a toughie.
Bad weather really started to set in the next day -- the first winter storm of the season was crossing the central California coast. I stopped at the Castle Air Museum near Merced on the way home, and was all but blown off the walkways. (This enterprise is a privately run museum that displays many aircraft, with an emphasis on US bombers. A detailed report is beyond the scope of this writeup, but suffice it to say that if they loaded up all the stuff on display with all the weapons usually carried, there would be sufficient force at hand to render an average small country uninhabitable for many years. The museum is on a side road out of Merced -- you will know you are there when you see an SR-71 parked on the sidewalk.)
I crossed the Great Valley by secondary road again, then picked up the freeways just east of Altamont Pass. Driving rain made the last stages of the trip home interesting; I was careful not to have to try out my van's anti-lock brakes. But in spite of the weather, I had observed over 160 objects in those two nights. Not bad for a weekend in November.