I think all who made it to Fremont Peak last night will agree that observing conditions were just great--for me anyway. Shirtsleeve temperature, no mosquitos, fog below, and a dark and steady sky. What more can you ask for?

I'm very happy 'cause I accomplished my goal of seeing the central star of M57 (the Ring Nebula in Lyra). It took me 30 minutes to do it with my 14.5" StarMaster Dob. I had to keep centering the planetry by hand in my field of view and use gradually shorter focal length eyepieces until I was using my 10mm Zeiss Abbe-Orthoscopic eyepice with a Ultima 2X Barlow giving me 380X. This enlarged and darkened the center of the planetary enough so that I could use the full power of my system to resolve the central star. The scope's 14.4" aperture kept M57 bright enough all along. Hand pushing a Dob to follow the sky at 380-400X and keeping centered a mag. 15 star with a short eye relief 10mm Ortho eyepiece is a challenge. My observing eye was going nuts. If I looked away for 20 seconds, the planetary was long gone out of view.

Last night was my best observing time at the Peak. The sky conditions were right and was the first time I could push the performance of my 14.5" mirror to see good diffraction patterns at 380X and star diameters under 1 second of arc. Jupiter and Saturn showed more detail through my 14.5" than I have every seen through anyone else's scope since I've been coming to TAC events. It was also a good night for many other planetaries: the Saturn planetary NGC7009, the Blinking planetary NGC6826, the Helix planetary NGC 7293 (fairly easy), and an interesting oblong planetary NGC 7008 in Cygnus. I was so excited, that before I knew it, it was 3:30 a.m. and I had originally intended to stay only until 1 a.m. The rising last quarter Moon beckened me to head home.

My next challenge is to transport that monster 14.5" Parallax Newtonian with a real GEM up to the Peak. Then, I won't have any challenge following things at 400X, just setting the scope up in the first place.

I can't wait until my next observing adventure at the Peak with TAC.