May 25, 2009: Observing at Coe this past weekend

Stephen Migol

I saw that some statements were made about going up to Coe this past weekend. I went two times: on Friday evening and again on Monday evening.

The cloud layer came up to about 100ft below the parking lot on Friday night, keeping the air warm and somewhat still. There was thick cloud cover visible over all the low-lying areas, including to the east. It was the darkest I've ever seen this site, as even towards Gilroy the clouds were thick enough to blot out the lights of the city.

I've been slowly learning the use of autoguiding by trial and error and these past two sessions were the best I've had so far. I'm just doing some prime focus imaging with my DSLR, nothing too complex at the moment.

On Friday evening, I finally got decent images of M81/82 and M101. After a long time watching the sky get darker and browsing the sky with binoculars, I picked up some easier targets of M17 and M8.

Getting some of these dimmer targets were a challenge for me, since I'd forgotten my red-dot finder and had to use the guidescope as a finder.

On Monday evening, the clouds were the way that I've been used to seeing them. The breeze was much stronger with some steady winds that had me holding up a blanket to shield the tripod during some exposures.

During this session, I picked up images of M95/96/105, M3, M64, and finished up with more exposures of M8.

I called the rangers at about 3 pm on both days and they were familiar with what I was asking.

Stephen