After almost a solid month of clouds and rain in Northern California, Saturday was shaping up as a clear shot between two storms. The hoped-for bread for Friday was rained/clouded out by a little front that got here later than it was supposed to, but Saturday was clear and bright. Hopeful. Of course, by late afternoon, there were some thin high clouds appearing to the north and west, and another storm was said to be due "sometime soon." No matter! Grab the C8, head for Grant Ranch county park, and hope for the best for the scheduled Halls Valley Astronomical Group starparty. The drive up was pleasant. With the recent rains, the California hillsides were again blanketed with thick, green growth and many kinds of early wildflowers were already blooming.

About a dozen telescopes showed up. You could take your choice of setting up in the north swamp, the south swamp, or on the asphalt (between the two lines of trees). It was a close race. The local crew of wild pigs that live in the park came by, but mainly stayed in the north swamp. Just in case you haven't noticed already, it was wet. Soggy, even. Many were expecting an early and heavy dew.

The plan for the evening was to take up my wanderings down the Milky Way where I'd left off last time, in northern Monoceros, and continue to the south. Backup plan: anything visible (those high thin clouds to the N and W were creeping S and E as I set up and polar aligned...).

Sure enough, just after I got set up on epsilon Gemini, things faded out. A patch of cirrus was wandering through, and bringing more and more friends. About the only thing open was to the west (looking right into the San Jose, Ca. light dome), so with some gloom about being clouded out, I set up and watched Saturn. The ringed planet soon dispelled the grumpies. Seeing was OK, allowing 225X but a little bouncy at that magnification. Cassini's division was visible on the ansae of the rings now and again. The shadow of the rings on Saturn, Saturn on the rings, and one cloud band were also evident. After enjoying the view for a while, I sighed, figuring that was probably about it for the night, turned around, and lo! ALL THE CLOUDS HAD VANISHED! Evaporated away! Clear Skies...all the way across the vault of the heavens. Hurrah!

Back to epsilon Gemini, and off we go! First stop was to revisit a couple of the sights seen at the end of the last escapade: clusters 2259, 2264 and the nebulosity surrounding that area (not sure if I saw the nebulosity or not...it was rather dewy and often the fuzziness around stars was due to a thin film of condensation on the various optical surfaces. This varied throughout the evening). Stopped by 2251, a small but bright cluster, on the way to the Rosette. I took some care at the Rosette to make sure the glass was not fogged, and was pretty sure I could see traces of the nebulosity around the cluster.

Floating south now into "new" territory (for me, anyway), I looked for 2262, which was probably one of the many clots of stars in the Milky Way around its location; no positive ID on that one. However, the next target, 2301, jumped right out at me. This is a fine cluster, nice and bright, and a worthy target if you are in the vicinity. It has the same overall magnitude at M50, but for some reason doesn't get the "publicity." (I guess this means that even stars need agents..:) Next up were 2286 and 2311, both of which are dim and shy. I think I found 2311, but 2286 was just lost in the Milky Way. Neither of these even gets a mention in the list of deep sky objects in Burnham's Celestial Handbook. But 2302 and 2309, the next two to the south, showed up (they also have a listing in Burnham). They're not especially big or brilliant, but there was fun in the finding.

Took a little stretch at this point. The sky was absolutely gorgeous, with the Milky Way visible over almost its entire length, disappering only to the north where it ran down into the SF Bay Area light dome. Orion and Taurus were a glittering array overhead. The dew seemed to be holding off for the moment, and it was surprisingly warm (on the relative scale of things...I still had on gloves, Russian ushanka hat, two pants, and puffy jacket; it was hardly shirtsleeve weather). Wandered around to some of the other scopes and got looks at stuff in Orion, which seemed to be the "target of choice" this night for a lot of the scopes.

Back to it. Next up was M50, the first Messier object of the evening. Easy to find, jumping right out in the finderscope, and very brilliant. I'd been using mostly 50X to 90X on the clusters so far, but here I tried going higher to 150X and 225X. Seems that clusters really are better at the lower magnifications, at least to my eyes. Immediately to the south of M50, there is a bunch of clusters and nebulosities. I readily found 2335 and 2343. Together, they form a sort of miniature double cluster, but the nebulosity around them was not visible. Slightly eastward is 2353. This is a nice, bright cluster, and another worth your time that doesn't get much "publicity." It has one especially bright (6th mag) star in the middle, and somehow that makes the whole assemblage seem more brilliant.

The next target, now over the border into Canis Major, was 2345. Good luck finding this one; I couldn't even find a bunch of stars that might be a candidate. This is another one that Burnham doesn't even list. But 2360, that's a different matter. Though not quite as bright overall as M50, it is a real sparkler and another to put on your to-do list when in this area of the sky. Skipping eastward again, I could not find 2374. Kept going east to hit M47 and 2423. What a beautiful sight! These two are only about two-thirds of a degree apart and fit nicely together in a wide-field eyepiece. After ogling them for a while, I skipped over to M46. This cluster is also big and unmistakeable, but in a different way from M47. M46 has zillions of smaller, lower magnitude stars, giving it more of a carpet of diamond dust appearance than the scattered gemstones look of M47.

I spent some time with M46, because of planetaries. It has 2438 in it, although (due to the dew, which was getting worse again) I was never all that sure I really, really saw it. The round fuzziness was on the right side of the cluster but rather indistinct. Finally, I dug out the diffraction grating and went over the cluster with that. Now the question wasn't whether or not there was a planetary, but which planetary you had in mind. There are a number of items in M46 that do not diffract into spectra but stayed round. Curious how prevalent this phenomenon might be in the general area of the Milky Way, I found a dozen more just sweeping N. to S. in the immediate vicinity, including one optically close-together pair.

The dew, having held off earlier, was now back with a vengeance. My star chart had beads of water sitting on the page it was open to (it's be Scotchgarded), the finder eyepiece dewed up in less than a minute (I'd been surviving by popping the cap back on between looks), the Telrad was a goner, and I was now running something like 70% central obstruction. The dew zapper was keeping the outside of the corrector clear, but couldn't warm the part near the secondary enough.

Seemed like the Milky Way, which was up high now, was going to be a dewed-out. The Big Dipper was rising, so I pointed the scope over that way (much lower down) hoping that would allow the zapper to win the battle a little more, capped up the eyepieces, and went to see what was going on with the other scopes while the dew zapper (hopefully) cleared the corrector plate. Many had surrendered to the dew and others were about to. I got a nice look at Hubble's Variable nebula (on a C8 that had an impressive array of anti-dew devices), and the monster Dob. had fine view of the Orion nebula (his primary was clear, but his secondary was having some dew troubles...the first time the owner had ever had that happen). There was a new pair of 10X70's out, and the owner was curious about what others thought. I took advantage of this opportunity to ogle the Pleiades. The Orions are nice in the center, maybe not quite as sharp at the edge as the 9X63 Celestron Ultimas I just got (remembering views from night to night is a chancy way to do comparisons, however. I didn't have the 9X63's with me).

Went back to the C8 patiently sitting there aimed at Ursa Major, uncapped things, and got a look at the Owl nebula in the few instants before everything fogged up with dew. Clouds of ground mist were visibly swirling as I moved around the scope, and it was obviously hopeless. Time to pack up. My eyeballs would probably only have lasted another hour more anyway...