After much anticipation about how seeing would be with this 'Asian Dust Storm' we've ended up with on the west coast, the night out at Coe turned out to be much better than I had expected. There were 9 or ten of us up at Coe by sunsst. I decided to bring my new AP 10" Mak-Cass on a Takahashi NJP160 mount, thinking that 10" aperture would be about as much as this night could handle. By sunset, I realized that the seeing was sub-arcsecond and the jet that was over us for the last week was gone. True, we had haze, but there was no wind and the excellent design of my AP Mak-Cass was light tight enough to offer dark fields of view of the NGC's and Messiers. At sunset, I started things off with 'another' look at Jupiter and Saturn. You would think that these two elder planets were getting a bit old to look anymore, but tonight, they revealed more detail than I seen for months, since their opposition times last fall. Jupiter had all its eight major belts showing and the joivian moons were sharp disks without any diffraction rings floating around them. There was a hint of detail on Ganymede. Saturn showed a comtinuous Cassini ring all the way around. The south polar region and equatorial belt were exhibiting mottling within. These views were with my 9mm Nagler and 5mm Tak LE eyepieces with the Mak's 3700mm focal length yielding ~411x and ~740x, respectively. I can't wait until Mars comes around in May on a good seeing night.
As darkness advanced, I turned to a few Messier galaxies in Leo, Coma B. Canes V. and Virgo. I've been spoiled observing with my 20" Starmaster on many of these Messier and NGC galaxies in these constellations. I've found out that using a very good light baffled 10" aperture scope, without any spider vane diffraction spikes showing on stars, is enjoyable on deep sky objects. Firstly, the f/14.6 focal ratio of this Mak offers much better focussing habits over the less forgiving 20" f/4.25 Dob. Also, at the 14.6 focal ratio, I was able to use my longest f.l. eyepieces (31mm, Nagler, 19 mm Panopotic) for great eye relief at moderate powers. I like looking at DSO's at moderate power to enjoy the detail visible in galaxies and planetaries. Many spiral and irregular galaxies do offer some detail to be seen.
By 9pm, I had turned to Mak to Eta Corona B, a 0.7 arc-sec double. I'm familiar with this double and use it to guage the night's seeing, often. Last night, this double was easily split by the 10" Mak with only my 9mm Nagler, 411x. Matt's 8" SCT and David's 155EDFS also split it easily. The air above was steady even though we couldn't see Antaries or Mars as they rose to the southeast. The haze was just too thick at the horizons. The sky above 30 degrees was acceptable and closer to the zenith worked out real well.
Rob had his new beautiful William Optics mount operating for the first time outside and already imaging with it. Barabara was camping up at Coe and brought with her a new small refractor. We gave her a few pointers on how to attach the many accessories that came with her new scope. David was there with his majestic AP 155 EDFS on a tall and sturdy G11. I haven't seen David since last year at Lassen. We compared a few doubles between our AP scopes.
A very good night out.