Paul Sterngold, Kal Krishnan and I had a fun little observing session at our new San Antonio Valley site Friday night. Despite the rather excessive humidity that pervaded much of Central California, the night was fairly transparent and the seeing turned out to be pretty good. Paul had his Genesis for photography, Kal used his 8" Meade SC and I had only my little 80mm Orion Shorttube (having just sold my trusty old 8" to a fellow in Israel[!]). It was the first time I'd had the little scope out under a really dark sky - the only previous experience was at Del Valle with some light from Livermore and lots of light to the west - and the session was to be satisfying.

Paul and I arrived arrived shortly before sundown, and as we set up we were soon greeted by Tom Graham, the fellow who has kindly agreed to let us into our new site whenever we like. He lives nearby, and gladly keeps his exterior lights extinguished at night. His wife, Pat, works as a receptionist and tour guide at Lick Observatory, as well as a teacher at the small school on top of the mountain; she has been our regular contact in the area for years. The new site is quite good, with low horizons, no trees in the way, a good dirt road for access, and grassy, gently hummocky topography. After the rain we expected lots of mud, but except for a few mucky potholes in the road, the ground was firm and in good shape. The dark revealed a few distant house lights, but nothing objectionable. We noted an occasional indirect and filtered glare from auto headlights on Mt. Hamilton Road about a mile away; these were brief and not serious, and Paul didn't feel as though they would harm astrophotographs. The most serious problem at the spot appears to be the interest of the locals; while they are welcome to visit and view, they insist on driving to the observing spot and using headlights - perhaps they will become more sensitive to this as time goes by. When they did stop by, they were very cordial as always.

I managed to see quite a few popular objects in good detail - the Ring, Dumbbell, and Orion Nebulae were quite bright and detailed at magnifications ranging from 16x to 90x, considering the modest optics. The hole-in-the-doughnut of the Ring was obvious, and the Dumbbell showed it's apple-core shape plainly. Gamma Andromedae, which I have recently discovered to be a serious challenger to Albireo as my favorite double star in the sky, split easily and sharply at 40x, and at 90x was resplendent with it's rich blue and golden yellow hues. Saturn showed sharply at all magnifications, and even two moons were there. I compared the views of Saturn to the ones that Paul's 80mm Celestron photoguidescope gave, and after noting the relative similarity at magnifications less than 100x, I was reasonably impressed that the Shorttube was a good optical value. The Celestron did give cleaner and more contrasty views, being less subject to color, and I suspect that at magnifications greater than 100x it would have blown my scope away; but for low power, the Shorttube stood up fairly well and did a fine job for the price. Jupiter had significant color fringes, as I had noted at earlier sessions, and if there is a serious shortcoming with the Orion this would be it - high power views of bright objects are sacrificed by the color.

The Orion Nebula was quite distinct and contrasty once above the horizon, with the four bright trapezium stars a cinch at 36x and higher. The Ultrablock and Deep-Sky filters helped on this object as well as others, especially with the water vapor glaze that seemed to cover the sky. The Veil and North America Nebulae were similarly helped, and even moreso by the OIII filter. One thing I really enjoy about the small fast scope are the views of these objects at low power; with a 35mm Ultrascopic eyepiece (49 degree AF), the expansive views take in the whole of each nebula, showing the nearly-complete gossamer circle of the Veil and the whole continent of North America, as well as the Pelican Nebula flying out along the east coast of the continent.

The Rosette Nebula was a case where aperture would have been a big help. My old 8" generally showed this nebula quite well with filters; with the 80mm, although all three filters were employed to see what advantage they could bring, none brought in the Rosette as they did the Veil or NA. It was visible, but barely so - perhaps a drier night would have allowed better views.

Globular clusters are bright and obvious, although they plainly suffer from lack of resolution. M-13 barely showed mottling with a few outer stars distinctly separate, but otherwise these objects need a bigger glass for detailed views.

Several bright star clusters rounded out the roster for the evening, and the little scope does extremely well on those. The Pleiades, Double Cluster and various M-clusters all looked quite lovely.

For me, the highlight of the evening was watching Kal take video shots of Saturn on his scope/camcorder setup. The seeing was quite good, and the image of Saturn on the viewing screen was beautiful and sharp, filling probably the middle ten percent of the image. Kal has said he may post some shots from the video - that should be fun!

At about 10PM we packed it in - the fog was starting to wax and wane on the hillsides, and we were feeling pretty drippy. The quality of the session boded well for future drier events, however, and our new SAV site seems like it will be a good one. I am looking forward to trying out the new 18" at SAV when it arrives.