Paul Sterngold and I had a little observing session at Del Valle Sunday evening. The skies were a little disappointing after our spectacular session at San Antonio Valley on Friday (see Paul's Report for August 29), but we nonetheless made a good evening of it, with a few good finds under the cloudy and rather bright conditions. When I arrived at 9:15PM, Paul was showing a family some nifty objects, eliciting the usual positive expletives that amateur astronomers love to hear!

Paul was using his C-8 on a Super Polaris Mount, and I had my 80mm Shorttube on the ricketiest tripod imaginable. Fortunately the shorttube is designed to be used at low magnifications, and so despite the tripod, the 80mm continues to amaze with the objects it has been showing me. The seeing was actually quite poor, so we didn't aim our sights on the planets much that evening. As Paul mentioned in his SAV report, the North America and Pelican nebulae were readily visible in the shorttubes under the dark skies east of Mount Hamilton; surprisingly, they were almost as easy at Del Valle, using either the Ultrablock or OIII filters. I believe that I could make out bits of nebulosity around Gamma Cygni as well, but these are quite a bit fainter, and the clouds played tag with the fuzzies all evening.

Paul and I then commenced a search of various open clusters in the Cassiopeia region. We spotted several NGC clusters with ease, with the shorttube giving lovely wide-angle views of the clusters' setting and the C-8 allowing us to zoom in and count some of the stars. NGC 7789, the "Magnificent Cluster," was one of the first we looked at. It was easily visible in both scopes, with countless faint stars peppering the region in Pauls 8" and a hazy glow showing in the 80mm. I recalled that in my 8" reflector under darker skies, this cluster truly lived up to it's name, although under these more obscured conditions it was only slightly better than mediocre. Open Cluster Harvard 21 also made a showing, although it was unclear to me how anybody could have determined it was a cluster at all - its sparsity and anonymity made it easy to overlook.

Cluster M-52 was a real treat compared to some of the more undistinguished NGC clusters. After giving our eyes a vacation with this splendid scenery, we decided to give ourselves a chore - to hunt for the Bubble Nebula, which lies just a degree or so southwest of M-52. The Bubble's location is relatively easy to find; it lies near a lone 5th magnitude star, between that star and M-52. It incorporates another star of about the 6th magnitude, but after that it becomes much tougher. Paul and I had never actually seen this elusive creature before, so we weren't certain of its precise location. After searching for about 30 minutes or so using various magnifications, fields and filters, we finally became convinced that the little 6th magnitude star was indeed surrounded by a lopsided nebulous blob, faint and small. Doubtless it would have appeared more obvious under better conditions (its tough to see the heavenly nebulae when you're dodging earthly nebulae!). I checked Burnham and some information in the Caldwell Catalog the next morning, and sure enough, we had seen the dim glow of the Bubble; next time we're out in the darker realms, I believe we'll get a good higher power view.

I took a quick wide angle look at the Andromeda Galaxy and her retinue of companions, the latter barely visible against the bright haze. It was about midnight, the dew was settling like the Sierra snowmelt and we were all growing a bit tired, so we packed it up and called it a night. Next dark clear night, glory awaits!