About a dozen folks showed up at the Montebello Open Space Tuesday night for a little astronomy. There were telescopes of every kind and description: Mark Wagner with his raccoon enhanced 14.5" Dobsonian was the largest, and I believe a Questar 3.5" was the smallest. All present enjoyed the warm and clear night. It was pretty dark for a location so close to town. The Milky Way was visible distinctly as soon as it cleared the horizon and got better the higher it got. The dark rift of the Southern Milky Way was visible when it was over the Santa Cruz Mountains. I of course was using my new Vixen 102mm Fluorite refractor being sold by Orion. I was set up next to Michele Stone who also has one of these fine telescopes and together we were the equivalent of an 8" refractor :).

I decided to do a little deep sky work and concentrated on finding some of the Brighter Hersel objects posted by Mark Wagner. The Messier galaxies were pretty easy in the 4"with M104, M100, M99, and M60 being seen. While a great deal of detail was not seen in most (it's only a 4"), M104 did show its dark lane, M100 was circular and of even brightness, M99 was round, and 60 was round with a stellar nucleus. Someone with binoculars spotted Omega Centuri so I swung the 4" and there it was! This was a really impressive object from Joshua Tree a number of years ago through my C-11. However, from this location It was about 2 degrees above the horizon so was not that impressive of an object. It was nice to frame it and a tree in the same field at low power. Next was the globular cluster NGC 5897, with a listed magnitude of 9.5. I thought this dim, extended object was somewhat dimmer than this.

About this time the Milky Way was high enough to go after some of the objects in that direction. M8 was a very nice object, with the stars embedded in the nebula. M20 was a little more difficult as was M16. M17 was very nice and some shape was seen at 131X (7mm). M22 showed a hint of resolution as did M4. M4 showed its distinctive "center bar" as described in "The Messier Album" by Mallas and Kreimer. The open cluster M6 (or was it M7) was a nice stellar jewel box of stars. Finally, last but not least was M27 that showed a little structure at higher power. About this time Jupiter was coming over the horizon so......well, it looked like Jupiter that had just come over the horizon! For me and most others, moon rise signaled the end of the evening.

All present seemed to have a most enjoyable time, as did I.