Del Valle delights...

Well! This was a real astronomy weekend, with two nights of excellent observing and camaraderie, and after two extravagantly late nights, does it feel GREAT to come back to work on Monday Mornin'! You know, this hobby creates interesting dynamics in a marriage. I buy expensive optical equipment, and then drag it out all night at least several times a month, and how can I expect my wife to appreciate or understand this, with a little 3 year old boy at home (who luckily is asleep during my sojourns)? And yet, when I head out, she wishes me a lot of fun, agrees to let me buy a $4,000 telescope, and then says "Well you could be barhopping or worse - I consider myself lucky!"...I have the greatest wife in the world, bless her forever. I hope and pray that someday she may wish to join me regularly.

This report is specifically for Friday night, when Paul Sterngold and I, both East Bay members of The Astronomy Connection (TAC) went out to a site near Del Valle Reservoir south of Livermore, California. It was a fine night, with pretty good seeing and very good transparency (the latter contributed to some fine views despite the proximity to Livermore; on a lesser night the view could have been quite murky, but tonight 6th magnitude stars and deep-sky objects were readily visible to the naked eye overhead and to the southeast). The Milky Way wasn't Fremont-Peak-outstanding, but it was fine and obvious just the same. No bright lights shine in our face here (with the exception of an occasional passing car, but you can see their reflected lights before they arrive). We set up about 10:30 PM; Paul was using a pair of 10x80s on a very big tripod, and his 13" old Coulter Dob with (I must say) a fine optical set, and I had my old 8" Meade, also of a good vintage for optics.

I first tried a number of old favorites - M-57, M-3, M-13, and M-51. Each looked great from this site. Epsilon Lyra split fairly easily at 115x after I got around to collimating, so I was satisfied that the night would be pretty decent.

Scorpio gleamed like a mighty arachnid in the south, even the tail well above the horizon, so I first aimed down thataway for some fun new items on my log. I visited some old favorites, the little Bug Nebula in the big bug's tail and Little Ghost Nebula in Ophiuchus, and then tracked down a few 9th to 10th magnitude globulars. NGC 6385 was the dimmest of these, with unresolvable stars in my 8". The rest were better - NGC 6293 glimmered with a beacon-like center with well-resolved stars at 175x, NGC 6144 was large and somewhat faint due to its sparsity but nonetheless well-resolved at 72x, and NGC 6144 was bright and well-resolved on its edge. I really enjoyed this last one; situated in the same medium-power field of view as G Scorpii, the two made a fine sight.

During the evening, Paul and I swapped several times to compare and enjoy each other's views, so I perhaps didn't log quite as many new items as I would have liked; but we had such fun sharing the moment that the old objects began to take on the characteristics of new and exciting acquaintances. The big central Milky Way objects were beautiful - the Lagoon and Trifid showed amazing detail at medium powers, the Trifid's dust lanes standing out gloriously in the 8" with both the Deep-Sky and Ultrablock filters, and the Eagle Nebula showing its central dark area wonderfully, the feature so magnificently captured by the Hubble telescope two years ago. My scope didn't make them look like cosmic thunderstorms, mind you, but two of the three towers were just visible at 175x. The Lagoon and Swan Nebulae were magnificent, as always - the Swan certainly qualifies as my favorite of the mighty quartet, not only because of it's exceptionally graceful appearance at medium magnification, but also because its more extended form can appear so different under different conditions and using different filters. The Swan not only glides with eternal beauty along the Milky Way, she also creates gossamer ripples in the ethereal water on which she floats.

Next, Paul and I compared views of the Veil Nebula. Paul had not seen it before, and so I was giddy over what he was about to observe for the first time. To me, the O-III filter works best for the Veil, although in a very dark sky one could easily argue that an Ultrablock or UHC would yield better detail at acceptable contrast levels. Here, anyway, the O-III was the champ in either scope, and the Veil was lovely. All three of the brightest portions were visible in the 8" scope (The central portion - I forget the NGC designation right off - was obvious if not well-defined in shape), and the wispy southern portion was an object of sweeping glory. The 13", of course, only served to enhance this view.

NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula in the heart of Cygnus, was a finer sight than I expected. It is not always great from this near-town location but tonight the O-III filter made short work of the object, which was well-defined around its entire oval, and showing some considerable density on its brighter end. The optically embedded stars make this nebula another of my favorites, and I looked forward to seeing it the following night at Fremont Peak.

A friendly police officer (a ranger, I think) showed up at about 1:00 AM, and we repeated some views for his sake. By this time Jupiter was up and about, so I gave him his first view of the gas giant. Despite its small elevation, he was astonished at the detail, especially the moons. The cloud bands did not show great detail. Paul showed him some other deep-sky objects - and I gave the fellow a view of M-27, now high overhead and a bright beautiful object (the loveliness of the star field around this object never ceases to amaze me!).

That about brought our session to an end at 1:30 AM or so. Paul and I thought so highly of this spot that we hope to get a regular East Bay close-to-home star party going here on appropriate midweek days (perhaps Thursday nights so as not to conflict with the Peninsula parties on Wednesdays). There is a long stretch of level dirt road just inside the gate at this location that would accommodate a dozen or so observers. We need to contact the East Bay Park District and perhaps the State Dept. of Conservation to see if this will work. Until next time - Clear skies