Well, just got back from Chews Ridge last night.

SCAC sponsored a small star party at the fire lookout above and slightly north of MIRA's observatory. Sadly, disuse by CDF has allowed the pines to grow quite large and obscure portions of the sky, but since I was one of the earlier arrivals, I found a location with 270 degree horizon to horizon views (one large pine blocked most of the north-to-east quadrant). This gave me ample opportunties to view most anything I cared too.

Great dark skies. Seeing was good to very good but only brief moments of excellent. Robin Cassidy offered various of us SCAC'ers plenty of opportunities to drool all over his Takahashi 9", with and without bino viewer, and we had some fun comparing eyepieces on Saturn around midnite or 1am when it was nice and high.

Although I finally obtained a decent star atlas (the massive Herald-Bobroff), as usual, I spent more time random walking the sky and looking at things in no particular order. On the way down, I picked up a Celestron Ultima Shorty Barlow to add to my small ocular collection [the 25mm SMA that my Celestar 8 came with and a Ultima 12.5].

Since the western sky was going to set first, I spent some time poking around the upper reaches of Sagittarius, and found quite a few globular and open clusters. I spent a lot of time on Jupiter and Saturn, taking advantage of my newfound 320X capability. Much of the time, the seeing held up well enough to take advantage of this, clearly resolving Cassini's division all the way around at times. 4 of Saturns moons were visible.

In the wee hours of the AM, Orion arrived, and I got my first good views of M42. Like, wow. Whoever here jokingly said new scopes should be bought in the summer so that you go thru the rest of the sky first was right. We compared various views of M42, my 25mm in my c8, Robin's various eyepieces in his Takahashi (winner: 35mm Panoptic), also got a look in a 12.5" Orion Dob.

Apparently, a fair number of TACyons were down in the gulch north of the lookout, doing the astrophotography thing with a NGC 18 and others. I was so busy I forgot to get down there and say HI!.

Oh. We saw the MIR flyover as scheduled (7:50 or so) but no shuttle. Later on there were several major meteor burns, one was so bright I saw the reflected light and it left a short incandescent trail for 10 or 15 seconds. I forgot to look for the Iridium so we missed it.

Ah, for those who care, I estimate the Chews Ridge fire lookout to be around 36:18N, 121:34 W. the lookout is at 5040 feet according to my topo map.

A suggestion to anyone taking long trips up dirt roads like Tassahara Rd in a small passenger car... Let some air out of your tires (I lowered mine from their usual road-holding 32-35lbs to 26-27lbs), and, assuming you know how to drift around turns a bit, I discovered 35mph was the ideal speed in my VW Jetta to smooth over the washboard yet maintain decent road control. Santa Cruz to Chews Ridge lookout: 1 hr 45 min(!!).