Spring finally having arrived in California, I set out last night for the PAS Oakridge road site, there to...at last...go through Leo, Coma Berenices, and Virgo hunting for galaxies. With the warm, dry air coming in from the NE, the conditions were reasonably favorable for a close-to-town site. Transparency was good. Light pollution was so-so; I could see all the main stars of Ursa minor (faintest 5.0), but not the 5.6 between the two fainter stars on its bowl. Call it 5.3, somewhat better than that to the west, worse to the east (light dome quite visible down low) . Once it got out of the low-lying murk, the Milky Way was visible across most of the sky, from the neck of Cygnus to Saggitarius. The seeing was not very good; there was a fairly brisk ground-level wind and going above 150X or so was generally pointless. The only cloud was the one composed of mosquitoes, and fortunately(?) it stayed below the optics, down where I was.

Eager as I was, I started galaxy hunting even before the end of astronomical twilight. All right, that's not the smartest of moves, but I was rather overcome with eagerness after 1) El Nino, 2) a nasty cough that lasted weeks, and 3) a back sprain bad enough to make moving the mount too painful for 2 weeks.

Started at Regulus and ran over along a chain of stars to the clot of galaxies between 52 and 53 Leo. Most of these were not visible, probably because it was still twilight (my excuse). The bunch around 52 Leo itself (3338, 3367, 3377, 3346) I could not get. On the way to 53 Leo, 3389, 3379 (M105) but not their close companion 3384, showed up. 3433, right at 53, was not visible. Skipping over the 70 Leo, its fairly close neighbor 3596 was not evident. Moving south, the grand triple of 3628, M65 and M66 was readily apparent and put on quite a show.

Refreshed and fortified by the triple's photons, I went for the clot of 9 (on Sky Atlas 2000, anyway) galaxies near to 81 Leo. Skunked. Not one found.

Headed off to Denebola, and from there to 6 Coma Berenices...the entrance to galaxy heaven. Working off this star, I found in short order M98, M99, 4237, and 4262 but not 4152. Moving a little further on down a chain of 3 stars, M100 showed up but not two others (4312, 4379) close by. Skipped north a little and found M85 and its close companion 4394. Didn't get 4293. Next was a side trip to 4147, a small globular cluster, which was there although not especially "globularly" in appearence (it resembled a galaxy, perhaps appropriately for the neighborhood...).

Back to galaxies! The next targets were M88 and M91, which showed up nicely. Some others nearby didn't show....aperture, aperture, I need more aperture (or a darker sky, or--preferably--both. It was late enough by now I could no longer invoke twilight as an excuse.). I seemed to be pretty successful with the brighter Messier galaxies, but the find rate fell off drastically on the dimmer ones. M87 was found next, but neither of its two very close companions (4476, 4478) were evident; they should have been right in the same eyepiece field of view. Next were M84 and M86, which showed together in the same field of view (100X). They're nice, but not as spectacular and the M65/M66 pair in Leo.

Time for a break. Got up, stretched, then lay down in the grass (thick and rich and sweetly scented, a positive legacy of El Nino) and just looked up at the sky a while. Swept the Milky Way with binoculars, picking out a number of the brighter objects... and succumbed to temptation. Instead of continuing on The Plan, and marching through Virgo, I was seduced first by the thought of a quick peek at M13; then the sight of Scorpio and Sagittarius started working on me as well. The little devil kept whispering in my left ear that I'd seen a lot of galaxies already, and I was going to Montebello tomorrow anyway (and could find more then)...thus overwhelming the little angel who was trying to keep me on the plan by noting the summer sky would be there all summer, and extolling the virtues of consistency.

Next thing I knew, the scope was pointing at M13 and I was really enjoying the view. Next thing after that, the scope somehow ended up pointed at Antares. So much for The Plan.

Now I'd never managed to find 6144, the little globular near Antares. I'd always though it was because big A drowned it out. Not so. It was because I'd always been looking in the wrong place. Draw a line between Antares and 20 Scorpius; 6144 is slightly north of that line. For some reason all last year I was looking south of the line, and blaming Antares. Wasn't hard to find, though it is rather small compared to the "big" globulars like M13, M4, and M22. With this minor personal victory, I went over to M4 and absorbed photons there for a while.

Next was a quick starhop down the spine of Scorpius to the Zeta1/Zeta2 pair and the beautiful open cluster 6231 right nearby. This one doesn't get the "publicity" that M6 or M8 or M20 does, but in my book it is the equal or better of any of them. Be sure to look at it next time you're in Scorpius.

Drifting northwest up the Milky Way, I started cluster-hunting. 6227-no. H12-yes. 6242-yes. 6268-yes. 6281-yes. This led to the Bug Nebula, which was there but rather indistinct and not showing the "legs" but only the body of the "bug". Tonight's token planetary thus taken care of, it was on to M7. I felt slightly guilty about skipping by a couple of other clusters without hunting for them, but that was forgotten when M7 came into view. I spent some time here, looking for the small globular 6453 on one side of M7, and open cluster H18 on the other side. Neither is all that obvious, but I eventually found them.

Continuing up the Milky Way, I stopped in at M6, always a nice view. Then it was on to the vicinity of the spout of the Sagittarius teapot. First were the globular 'pair' 6522 and 6522, then the globular 6569. All these are small and did not exhibit many resolved stars. Open cluster 6558 seemed lost into the star fields of the Milky Way; there were several candidate groups of stars that could have been it. Next move was back north to the small, but nice, open clusters 6540 and 6520.

My eyes were starting grow a bit tired, so I skipped past some clusters (there's tomorrow...) to end the evening at M8 and M20. Plenty of wispy nebulosity visible in both. M8 seemed especially eager to put on a show with a lot of delicate tendrils I don't remember having ever seen before. Fine way to end the session.