While other TAC observers had headed to Pacheco Pass, Del Valle and perhaps Coe on Friday night, I decided to take my new Starmaster 18" up to San Antonio Valley east of Mt. Hamilton for a whirl in the best skies we've seen since Zeus knows when. Until Friday the 27th, the 18" had seen little action except one trial run at Del Valle, and it would be good to get back to one of my favorite stomping grounds in the East Bay after a 2-month total hiatus.

The roads to SAV had been among the hardest hit in the area in terms of rain and flood damage...Mines Road was now passable but not without some interesting features, such as total pavement washouts where still-roaring arroyos crossed over them, landslides where the roads had slumped a full six feet, and places where parts of the road had altogether tumbled down the hillsides leaving a scant one lane to pass...a fun ride in the dark. Owing to other constraints, my friend Chris and I arrived at about 8:30PM.

Conditions were not perfect - a few of things with which we had to contend were mildly soggy ground, variable high clouds, very soggy dew (turning to frost and ice by 11:30 PM), lack of a collimating eyepiece due to a mixed-up shipment by my supplier a few weeks back, and the distraction of a friend who is more interested in telling old drunk stories and becoming inebriated than in peering through an eyepiece (but he's a good guy, so I drag him along)...yet, the evening was to be very satisfying.

I unloaded the big scope under the relatively brilliant stars, with an audience of two people who had not seen this scope yet (our property host was also there), and set it up to get it as closely collimated as I could under the circumstances. It was February 27, the day on which my dear old Dad would have been 66 years old...it is to him I attribute my love of the skies and nature, as well the opening in the clouds on that day, and so I dedicated the scope to his memory and named the scope for him and my Mom, who has also played a great role in my life. From that night forward, the scope shall be named, for better or worse, "Harold & Janet," a bit cumbersome, but eminently appropriate. With the secondary probably slightly askew, I turned the scope skyward.

Among the objects that I felt like I was seeing for the very first time again were M42 (spectacular with detail beyond compare), M51 (arms, knots and all), M97 (eyes and all), M81, M82 (incredible detail along the axis), M104 & NGC 4565 (dust lanes sharp and obvious), and the clusters M47 and M46. M47 was brilliant beyond compare, and M46 showed the little foreground planetary NGC 2438 sharply as a beautiful miniature of the Ring Nebula M57, but this time set against a sparkling glow of hundreds of stars with its own dwarf coal peeking from the hole-in-the-doughnut. At high power, the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini easily showed the detail that has given it it's name. Thor's Helmet (NGC 2359) showed all of it's splendor, both the NGC and IC portions of it's nebulosity, with almost alarming clarity. A new (for me) planetary nebula, NGC 2440 (found a bit south of the M46-47 pairing) became one of my new favorite objects, at 467x a splendid little double-lobed planetary surrounded by a bright glow, set in the beautiful starfield of the Puppis Milky Way. It is compact, magnitude 11, listed by Dreyer as "not well-defined," but in the 18" it was *bright* and showed beautiful detail with the optics used (11mm TV plossl, TV 2.5 barlow). I can not confirm the central star, but the seeing was not perfect and another better night may reveal the star. The Leo's Triplet galaxies, including M65 and M66, and some other a fainter galaxies were not great, but better collimation and sky conditions should help fix that problem (in fact, the following night at Del Valle they were much better! :-) The IC Nebulae in central Auriga were obvious (with filtration) if not as detailed as under a clearer sky. The Flame Nebula near Zeta Orionis began to show the beautiful shape so obvious in photos.

Globular clusters have always been my favorite type of object, and now a very bright globular, M3, was conveniently set in the eastern sky a short hop from M51. Upon turning the scope toward M3 and placing my 11mm plossl in the focuser (187x), I was greeted by the most stunning view of a DSO I think I've ever seen - thousands of stars splaying out from a bright but detailed center, streamers seeming to swirl toward me like a scene from a 3-D movie. I stared at this until I had to turn away and dry the tears from my eyes. Even my tipsy friend was fabulously impressed by this sight (although it is hard to know exactly what he was seeing at the time ;-)...I can't wait until summer when M5 and M13 make appearance once again.

As for the scope itself, it performed quite well, doing everything an 18" should do. The azimuth bearings are made of virgin teflon on glassboard, and the 160-pound scope swings around as smoothly as silk. The altitude bearings are polished aluminum strips on virgin teflon, and they move well enough to allow casually easy following of small objects at high power, all the while permitting virtually any size eyepiece to be used without having to rebalance the scope. Whether using a 3-ounce 1.25" plossl or a much heavier 2" eyepiece, the scope required no fussing to keep the elevation angle. Even balancing atop my ladder, gazing at the Eskimo nebula, for example, the scope swivels and nudges easily when pointed near the zenith. If I had any reservations about the value of aluminum versus ebony star bearings, those are dispelled. In addition to the supplied Telrad, I have mounted an 8x50 finder on the secondary cage, and together these make an unbeatable pair. The whole scope goes together in about ten pleasant minutes, 15 if you spend time bantering with your companions, and fits easily in my Corolla wagon.

At 10:00PM the 8x50 became dew-fogged, followed by the secondary at 11:45, and it was time to wrap up. Interestingly, the skies became sparklingly clear about the time the frost started in, so we paused for a few moments of naked-eye joy before tearing down. Then we blotted away the dew from the scope structural members, chipped the frost off whatever we needed to see through, and headed back down the mountain as Art Bell and his goofy guest kept us company on the long drive home...I can't wait for truly clear weather and dark skies (Lassen here we come!).