Saturday, June 27th TAC had a star party in the southwest parking lot at Fremont Peak state park near Monterey, California. We had clear skies with a nice cover of fog below that blocked out much of the light from the towns around the Peak. I would guess there were over 30 telescopes in the southwest parking lot.

A number of us got to see the "green flash" as the Sun set. The Peak over looks Monterey Bay to the west. We couldn't see the water due to the fog. I didn't think we would see the flash with the fog but it was easy to see. We also saw Mercury. Through the telescope Mercury looked like a flag with blue on one side and red on the other due to the atmospheric refraction.

Several of were looking at the Moon. Petavius was showing nicely. The main rille in Petavius was very easy to see. The other rille running out from the central peak did not stand out as well as in number 59 chart in Rukl's Atlas of the Moon. The thinner long rille not touching the central peak was easy to see. I was using a 7mm Nagler in my Astro-Physics 180mm f/9 EDT refractor giving about 231x. The seeing was quite good. I think it was about 7 to 8 on a 10 point scale most of the night. Cruising along the treminator the wrinkle ridges (I believe in Mare Crisium) were very bold.

While waiting for Jupiter and Saturn to come up I looked at the many of the showpiece deep sky objects and some double stars. Epsilon Lyra gave very clean little airy discs. The closer pair of Nu Scorpio had a nice dark space between them. I looked at Antares little companion. M13 was a mass of little points of light. NGC 6207 was easy to see. I did try half heartedly to see IC4617. Given the success of a friend seeing dim DSOs in a 55mm Vixen fluorite refractor maybe I should have tried harder with IC4617 using a little higher power eyepiece. I have seen IC4617 in another friends 18" Obsession.

Sorry to go on about the deep sky. Jupiter finally cleared the trees. By this time in the morning I was very tired, I had been up late the night before and was too tired to make a drawing. It was great just to see an old friend after so many months. The northern eq. belt was quite dark and the SEB was lighter looked split along its length. I was using an Astro-Physics/Zeiss binviewer and I think I was using the 10mm Zeiss Abbe Orthos which in the binoviewer give about 200x. It was either the 10mm or the 6mm which give about 324x in the binoviewer. Anyway Jupiter was showing lots of nice detail and shortly before I called it a night the GRS was starting to come around the limb. Saturn was very low and soft but it was still very easy to see the Cassini division.

I think a fun night was had by all.