Clearing in Auburn

by Jim Ster

I just got back from an awesome evening at BC with Jane and her 12.5" Starmaster EL, Mel, which has recently been outfitted with a new Sky Commander system.. In an effort to save time and beat a little of the Friday traffic, I left my scopes at home and just brought my box o Nagler's and my Stellarvue 12x60's. Temps dropped onto the high 40's around midnight thirty. Transparency was an 8.5 and the seeing varied from 7 - 9. Jane brought a list of Planetary Nebulae she downloaded along with the Gottlieb 600 to guide us through the evening.

We began the evening with a couple of old favorites, M27 and M57. With an O-III, the dumbbell was spectacular. But when I actually saw glimpses of the central star in M57, I knew we were in for a real great night. With Jane's semi-goto, we must have gone through 20 - 30 PN's. Around 11:30, we easily viewed Saturn and Jupiter at 500x, no problem. We pushed it to 1000x, but the results weren't as dramatic as when Gregg and I pushed his 25" well beyond its theoretical limits earlier this summer, but far better then we ever expected considering the pessimistic weather forecast throughout the day. The trapezium in M42 gave us clearly 6, sometimes 7 stars.

Shortly after midnight, we began seeing a few Leonids and were rather surprised at their frequency a full week before the projected peak. It certainly gave us some hope that next weekend might be clear enough to see a few. And speaking of next weekend, Mags and I will be up in Shingletown and weather permitting, we'll be at the Shingletown Airport next Saturday night. Everyone's welcome to come up.

We left around 1:00am, thoroughly satisfied with our collection of ancient photons gathered this evening.

Once again the adage of "If you don't get out there, you won't see it!" comes to mind. You guys really missed a great evening. Especially you, Randy!!!