Short OR from 5/12/07: Ice House Observation Plateau (IHOP4)

by Steve Gottlieb

On Saturday night Marsha Robinson-Hitchings, Shneor Sherman, Jim Ster and I met at the 5000' site known by the Sacramento area observers as IHOP (about 30 miles east of Placerville off Highway 50 on Ice House road). Conditions were very good as I was easily reaching mag 15.5 galaxies in my 18-inch and spiral structure jumped out in brighter galaxies. Transparency was down a notch, though, from an excellent night at this site, but good seeing allowed pushing the magnification up and gaining back that extra bit of lost contrast. Fortunately I brought along my winter observing gear -- by 2:00AM, there was frost forming on most surfaces.

We had some striking binoviewer vistas in Shneor's custom 22-inch scope including summer favorites that were well up late at night. I passed 6700 NGC's that I've taken notes on and the remaining NGC galaxies north of -40 degrees that I have yet to observe shrunk to 80 (scraping the bottom of the barrel here). Monday night I plan to head over to Lake Sonoma (Lone Rock), so I'll try to post a more complete report on both nights later this week.

Steve

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