Last night I headed out to Del Valle do to a little casual observing. I had some free time before I left to pick up my observing companions, so I used the opportunity to prepare a short observing list for the evening. I was especially interested in finding M2, M15, and M33, all objects I've never seen before or never found with my own eyes. I had seen M33 at San Antonio Valley a few weeks ago , but I never located it myself and had never seen it through my own scope or with binoculars. I've been brushing up on the Autumn constellations and the galaxies of Autumn and was also hoping for a chance to take a peek at NGC253 in Sculptor, but that will have to wait for another night and another observing report.

We arrived just after sunset and started setting up immediately. There were just two scopes, my Short Tube 80 and Dave Silva's Celestar 8 - his wife Rebeka also came along with us and she spent a good part of the early evening tracking satellites with my 10x50 bino's. I was hoping I'd have the chance to meet another East Bay TAC member, Dave Bush, but circumstances prevented that meeting. For the first 45 minutes or so there was a light but steady wind blowing and an even steadier stream of cars. In fact, up until about 10:40 it was almost a cavalcade of cars - it was more than just annoyance as we spent most of the time shielding our eyes from the headlights. However, shortly after 10:30 the traffic all but disappeared, the seeing got fairly steady for a spell ( I would rate it at 6 1/2 out of 10), and the real observing began. We had nice views of Jupiter and Saturn through Dave's Celestar 8, although I was less interested in doing planetary observing that evening, Dave was nice enough to let me find M2 and M15 with the C8, both of which turned out to be beautiful globular clusters and both were well resolved although M2 seemed to break up more readily than M15.

After successful encounters with M2 and M15 I decided to consult my star chart and have a go at finding M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy. I've not been much of a galaxy hunter in the past but I'm now beginning to appreciate the subtlety and challenge of observing galaxies. What really got me hooked was that one evening at San Antonio Valley when Bruce Jensen and Paul Sterngold where looking for and found Stephen's Quintet - we also had a splendid view of NGC7331 and that image has not yet left me. So there I was with my 10x50 bino's, looking for M33 in Triangulum. The transparency was not the greatest I've seen (haze), but the sky was clear of clouds, the moon had set and the Mily Way was clearly visible. I was scanning the western region of Triangulum looking for M33 for a few minutes when I suddenly noticed what looked *almost* like something non-stellar. Yes, there was something there but I couldn't be sure if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me or wishful thinking but it looked like a very large patch of very dim haze and I really needed to use averted vision to see it. Still, I couldn't be quite sure so I pointed my Short Tube 80 in the direction of the haze and popped in my Meade 24.5mm SW lens to give me about 16X and a 4deg field. With the ST80 the haze was more apparent. I asked Dave and Rebeka to come have a look to see if they could see the hazy something. They both commented that they saw it but would not have noticed it if I hadn't pointed it out. Ok, so it was clearly time to put the C8 on the job. We used the Meade EP from my scope to give us a wider field, pointed the scope at the haze and sure enough, there it was! Through the C8 I could make out more detail, and I could just begin to resolve the "pinwheel" structure with averted vision but it was very elusive. We all spent several minutes observing M33 and I was very happy and surprised that I was able to spot M33 with my 10x50 bino's. Finding M33 was definitely the crowning achievement for me that evening. Small steps, small steps...

The evening wore on, Dave's wife, Rebeka, was tired and decided to get some sleep in the car. I spent some time scanning around the region of the double cluster in Perseus, just admiring the beauty of the star formations in that region of the sky - I was actually looking for two IC objects (IC1805 and 1848) but wasn't quite sure if I had really seen them or not. Dave found the Swan Nebula, which is always a beautiful sight, but very soon afterwards the wind started to pick up again. We had a brief period that evening where the sky was quite dark as the low clouds had clearly moved in over the Bay Area, but by 12:00am the clouds had moved in even closer and where increasing the light glow in the sky. Furthermore, the humidity had risen, the seeing had become quite soft and we all decided to call it a night.

All in all it was a very pleasant evening. We did have a surprise visit from a police officer just as we were about to pull out. I had seen him pass by earlier in the evening, he checked us out with his floodlight and quickly passed on. When he approached my vehicle he said something like, "Oh, I didn't know it was you telescope people," but he was friendly and let us know that he was most certainly "doing his job." Finally, a quick pit stop at the BP station where "nothing works" and the employees are too busy painting their nails and ignoring customers to notice their own signs plainly posted on the bathroom wall, "The lock is broken, KNOCK FIRST."

Clear skies and happy hunting to all of you!