Pacific Park Salinas

by Jamie Dillon


Pacific Park is the old name for our Salinas neighborhood. Hauled Felix into the backyard last night to make sure of getting some scope time this week.

(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Kept it simple, using a 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians.)

This'll be quick. As I said to Joey while heading for the showers after observing, "Transparency's crummy, at least the seeing sucks." At 210x, could get 5 stars in the Trapezium some 20% of the time. M42 and M37 were pale ghosts. Saturn was gooey, and yes collimation was right on the money. Could see the Cassini division sorta. Looking at sigma Ori, the 7th visible star in that amazing solar system took averted vision.

The one moment of wonder was looking at Castor. It was boiling nicely, but showed a clear split. Castor just has a look of nobility. And then I can never keep track of how many stars are really orbiting around each other there. 6 as I remember.

There were some plusses. Dew held off, and apparently I remember how to set up and use a scope.