Fremont Peak on Saturday, May 30th 1998, turned out to be a good night for Astronomy. I arrived at the area behind the Ranger's house around 6:30 pm. Given that there were high clouds I didn't set up right away.

I brought three scopes, my 17.5" home-built scope, my Takahashi FS-102 4" refracter, and my Intes MK-67 6" Maksutov. I surveyed the area and there were some very nice telescopes there. In the refractor category there was a 5" F/8 Astrophysics, a 6" F/8 Takahashi, and a 7" F/9 AP. In the reflector category, there was a 10 F/5.6 and 14.5" Dob. Lastly, there was a very nice Cerevalo 8" on an AP 900 mount, a semi-reflector with refractor-like images!

I enjoyed an hour or so of conversation with new and old friends: Rod Norden, Marsha Robinson, Mark Wagner, Robert Hoyle, Rich Neuschaefer, Peter Natcher, Sandra Macika, and Ron. I especially enjoyed talking with Rod who is now off to China for a few weeks. He gave me some good info about China which I will surely put to use on my own China trip in several weeks.

As twighlight approached the public started arriving and I noticed the skies started to clear. I pondered whether to tip the balance more in favor of the refractors by setting up my FS-102, remain neutral with the Intes, or go with my favorite, my 17.5". I chose the latter. Later Jay arrived and again notched the refractor count with a fine Meade 5" refractor.

Seeing at first I thought was not good. Maybe my mirror hadn't yet cooled down because a view through Mark's 14.5" showed steady seeing while viewing the moon. Luckily my thin Coulter mirror cools down fast. It helped that it wasn't too cold. In fact like many other nights I've spent at Fremont Peak the perceived temperature actually _increased_ as the night went on. And, like I have noticed in the past this type of night is usually accompanied by fantastic seeing. This night was no exception!

There was a good sized group of visitors. I showed at least a couple dozen people the moon, M51, M108, M97, M81/82, M57, M13, and M3. Like others, I had to dance around the clouds to show people objects. Luckily there were a lot of bright objects to choose from!

By around 10:30 the sky except to the west seemed clear! However, I think even in the clear area of the sky there must have been some high clouds because I couldn't see the little "W" pattern of stars that I use to find M27. I could only see 4 of the 5 stars in the "W". On a good night I can see all five from my backyard in San Jose. But even though transparency was not perfect I heard several people remark about the seeing. Apparently some people were having fun splitting doubles.

I couldn't remember which star was zeta bootes so I asked Jay. I pointed my scope at it and I was surprised that I split it at 400x with full aperature. Usually a large aperature scope is at a severe disadvantage because of moving air cells, even though theoretically more aperature allows one to split closer stars. I have tried on at least three other occasions to split zeta at full aperature but it was always dancing around so much that it was hopeless. Using a 6/7" aperature mask allowed me to split Zeta on each of those occasions.

I then tried using my aperature masks. It was an easy split at 7" and 6". At 5" Zeta was notched and at 4" it was definitely elongated.

Someone said jokingly that they had the center star of M57 so I thought I would try. I have seen it a number of times with my 17.5" scope and also a second fainter interior star on at least three occasions in the last several years. While I could not detect the second star I had no trouble with the center star. With direct vision to me it appeared to pop in and out. Using averted vision I could see it 80% of the time at 400x. Mark Wagner came over and initially thought he saw it pop in a couple of times but then didn't see it again after that.

After my success with that I tried for IC 4617 the faint galaxy between M13 and NGC 6207. I have now seen this mag 15+ galaxy on more than a half dozen occasions. I new exactly where to look, right next to a little trapezium of stars. I thought I imagined it a couple of times but I could not confirm that it was anything but my imagination on this night! The sky was just too bright. But I did take mental note that the trapezium of stars looked pin-point sharp at 400x. This was one of the steadiest nights I had seen in the last 4 years.

After a few messiers (M27,M57,M22,M11,M5,M3,M92) I heard Rich say he has split Antares with a 4" refractor. On went my 4" aperature mask and there it was! Antares and its green companion star. Sandra came over and confirmed. I then tried different masks while she watched. She liked the 4" and 5" masks the best. The companion started to get washed out with at 6" and 7". The seeing was not nearly as good at Antares altitude as the other objects I had just viewed.

I also had the opportunity to view Antares through Rich's 5" F/8 and Alan's 6" F/8. Both scopes I thought showed the pair better than my scope. The main difference was that the refractors seemed to show less of Antares' diffraction rings. That is, in my scope (effectively 4" F/20 unobstructed) the green companion was in the bouncing diffraction rings, while in the refractors the companion was just outside of the difraction rings.

I finished off the evening with a spectacular view of M22 through Mark Wagner's 14.5" scope. Thanks Mark, that was one spectacular view!

I packed up and left around 1:15 am. I wish I could have stayed later but I hadn't brought sleeping for my son and me. It was sure a great night though for observing and talking with my friends. Who says 1st quarter moons at the Peak aren't worthwhile? Certainly not me!