Kal Krishnan and I tried some observations Friday 9/5 at Del Valle Regional Park, only 8 miles south of Livermore. I arrived first at about 8:30 PM, just in time to treat some "gee-whiz" type mountain bike riders to a few views of bright deep-sky objects plus Jupiter in the 8" Newtonian. The seeing was mediocre at best, and the warm marine layer was thick and squishy, allowing the lights of Livermore and the Bay Area to intrude high toward the zenith. The bikers, both avowed thrill seekers and ostensibly a tough audience for things as "tame" as the Dumbbell Nebula and Hercules Cluster, were nonetheless impressed enough to hang around for 45 minutes to chat and view the distant objects. All the while, the imperceptibly increasing southeasterly wind began to bring in cooler and drier air from the eastern flanks of Mt. Hamilton.

As Kal arrived with his 8" Meade LX-200 and the now-well-chilled bikers had decided to pack up, the seeing had not improved, but the sky was beginning to change. The light cones had dropped to only about 10 degrees by 9:45, leaving the southeast and zenith clear, dark and star-spangled. Although still twinkling, the sky sharpened due to the drop in humidity, and we began to discover what this site could actually deliver...

After getting comfortable with a few fun bright objects, Kal and I decided to go for the gusto, and search out some fainter galaxies in Pegasus and Andromeda. As the darkness continued to gather ever deeper, the faint beacons of the galaxies filled our mirrors with ancient light. >From tens, even hundreds of millions of light years away, came the speeding photons from these distant island universes: NGC 7177, 63 Million Light Years (MLY), Magnitude (M)11.2; NGC 16, 145 MLY, M12.0; NGC 23, 208 MLY, M12.0; the optical (?) pair NGC 7332 and 7339, M's 11.0 and 12.1 respectively; NGC 7625, 81 MLY, M12.1, NGC 7678, 161 MLY, M12.2; and these two galaxies in a pair, NGC 7769 and 7770, at about 200 MLY, with M's of 12.1 and 12.9 (!) respectively. These galaxies were generally readily visible, most without averted vision. They represent a couple of personal barriers broken for me (possibly for Kal as well), including an assault on my first (nearly) 13th magnitude object in my 8" scope. Kal's LX-200 with GoTo was admittedly a tremendous asset, a relatively easy way to verify the finding (it helped that we shared the same aperture!). Also, we didn't find every 12th-13th magnitude galaxy we hunted, but I have little doubt that, given the right objects, we could have seen individual 13th-mag-plus objects from Del Valle as well.

Even these fine bags weren't necessarily the high point of the evening. At one point, while searching for some object that we didn't find, we stumbled across an extremely faint "cloud" of - something. In my scope, it looked suspiciously like a faint broad star cluster, not shown in Sky Atlas 2000, but when Kal slewed to it, verified that he could see it and checked his computer base, the screen and listing showed the NGC 70 galaxy cluster, a half-dozen or so galaxies with no individual brighter than 13.5 and most much less than that. I still cannot quite bring myself to believe that we have seen this assemblage; it will take me a few more sightings to satisfy myself, but if it is true, then Del Valle holds tremendous promise for the future as a midweek-gathering site!

We closed with some brighter and easier objects which were nonetheless new to both of us...Galaxies NGC 404 and 7640 in And, NGC 752 Open Cluster in And, NGC 1491 Nebula in Per, and the Bubble Nebula in Cas...a fine close to an amazing evening of viewing. Several of us in the East Bay have been recently touting Del Valle as a good compromise between between reasonable darkness and reasonable driving distance, but Kal and I were not prepared for the quality of observing that we found Friday night - perhaps we needn't use the word "compromise" any more I hope that many TAC members will be able to come out and sample the potential of our Del Valle site.