As I pulled into the lot behind the Ranger's house, I was surprised to see few telescopes set up. After unloading the NGT-18 and setting up, I sat with other observers and enjoyed the nice weather and interesting conversation one finds at Fremont Peak. The high clouds passing through didn't look promising and indeed, they lingered till well after dark. The Moon looked nice in the 18" and I ran it up to 500X or so, just for kicks. When the atmosphere would settle down, it looked nice with an incredible amount of detail. However, these periods were rare and brief so I settled on about 157X for poking around. Several members of the public were present and they enjoyed the views through the variety of telescopes that had appeared. There was the "other" NGT-18, an Obsession 18", a homebuilt 18", a 12", a very nice Takahashi (SP) 8.25 SCT, the ever-present 7" AP refractor, as well as a nice 4" refractor. There were undoubtedly more telescopes lurking about that I didn't see.

The setting of the Moon seemed to be a signal to the annoying high clouds and they found other astronomers to annoy. Since I had a friend and his lady up visiting, I started with some of the brighter and bigger objects. M3, a nice globular cluster see med a bit soft at 64X, due to the deteriorating seeing. M51, a spiral galaxy showed well with a 22mm Panoptic (93X) and got oohhs and ahhhs from members of the public. M66 and M65 were a nice pair at 64X and the public folks seemed impressed. NGC 4565, a nice edge on spiral also showed well at 93X with the dust lane being very prominent. The galaxies M63, M85, and M64 elicited a variety of opinions from my friend and the public. The "black eye" in M64 was visible at 93X. About this time, I noticed th at my pointing accuracy was getting progressively worse, much to my embarrassment. I attributed the problem to the RA encoder and have (hopefully) fixed the problem. Michele Stone was interested in hunting some faint galaxie! s, so I decided to join in. First was NGC 4688, at magnitude 13. It seemed almost perfectly round and of almost even brightness. NGC 4631 filled the field at 93X and its 12th magnitude was also visible. The interacting galaxies NGC 4650 and 4657 were an interesting pair. At first glance, they looked like a single galaxy. On closer examination at 93X, two distinct entities were visible. The small galaxy NGC 4676, at magnitude 13 was next followed by the somewhat small globular cluster NGC 6229. Abo ut midnight I looked up and commented on how dark the sky looked and a quick trip to the restroom confirmed what everyone who goes to Fremont Peak dreams of: the fog was covering San Juan Bautista, Hollister, and the other annoying sources of light pollution! It was getting dark! Of course, I spent the next several hours trying to figure out what was wrong with my encoders so I missed some of the fun others were having. Michele Stone was having a great time and would call o! ut each new object she had found. I did manage to look for and find the little galaxy IC 4617 next to M13. It was tough, even in the 18" at 156X! I rounded out the evening by looking at M8, M20, M16, and a detailed M17. I managed about three hours of sleep, loaded the truck, and drove home through the fog. Overall, a very good evening notwithstanding the technical troubles.