Starplace: Fremont Peak State Park, SW Parking lot
Stardate: July 18 and 19, 1998 Temperature: 85+ all night long!

I arrived at Fremont Peak at tea-time Saturday July 18th after a 120 mile drive along the San Andreas Fault. Quite a group had already gathered. It was, after all the third quarter moon Saturday night. No one-star-party-per-month for this intrepid gang of observers, I happily discovered. I met a lot of new and not-so-new friends and saw a lot of great sights through well used telescopes on my first observing session at Fremont Peak. I staked my claim, between Jim Bartolini and Bruce Jensen. This turned out to be a great photon all night diner, sandwiched as I was, with our four scopes cranking out gasping views and delightful treasures for many hours. The whimsical highlight for me was Mark Taylor's lego telescope family (which I captured with a great photo). The trio included an SCT, a refractor with a binoviewer- whereever did you get that idea?, and a dobsonian reflector, pointed towards, what else? Dobson's hole! Or was it one of those French toilet kiosks? OK, no snide comments, please! That's my kind of telescope! Another highlight was listening to and talking with Rick Singmaster, the Starmaster Telescope Starmeister, who schmoozed with the owners of his fantastic scopes, Peter and Bruce. I just HAD to demonstrate my scope for him, showing him my cool anodized aluminum, black heat shrink wrapped truss tube poles, and the bug screened mirror vent holes. Luckily he was at either Bruce or Peter's scopes for the duration of his visit, just a short starhop away. Then he and Ed Erbeck went off to mooch some photons in other scopes.

I spent quite a while collimating my scope. Ok, I'll admit it, I like to collimate! It's sort of like, um, let me rephrase this... It's sorta like preparing for a marathon, yes, that's it! Like stretching exercises, readying the scope and observer for the endurance needed over the long night ahead.

A 4-H club and their Project Astro leaders were camping over by Coulter, and used the 30 incher to plot and sketch Pluto over the weekend. I visited them for a while. I heard it was over 100 degrees in the observatory when the kids were doing their work in the afternoon. I was sorry to have missed their program that night (I was busy, um collimating)! My hat goes off to our young astrokids - they even made their own scopes!!

My observing projects on this night fell into three segments. First stellar spectra thru my Rainbow Optics Star Spectroscope, which I have already written about. Then the deep sky observations interspersed with and ending with shallow sky observations.

Not to belabor the beautiful, yet familiar objects we all seem to savor over and over, I'll skim over the Messier objects. Of the 35 M's I grabbed, the most spectacular were also those seen in other scopes. The six foot white "Harveyscope" lassooed M-57, the glorious ring nebula. Through monster aperture, I've seen this wispy wreath takes on a three dimensional gauzy textured appearance. Thru the Harveyscope at 900+ X it took my breath away! Gazing in at this object, which took up the entire field of view, was akin to looking into a ancient and weathered cave, and I wanted to jump right in! The central star blinked off and on, but held steady visibility for seconds at a time. Thanks Jay, for the starshow!

M17, the swan, the horseshoe, the elephant trunk, the omega will always be the swan nebula to me. Swimming gently in the river of light, the Milky Way. Not in Rich's Refractor, however! That was one dead swan swimming upside down the other direction! But the crisp beautiful view made any mourning unnecessary! A quick return to my scope resurrected the dead bird, thank goodness! And M16, the Star Queen had snakey detail. Those Hubble pictures are cool, but nothing beats real photons in the eyeball! That's the stuff that dreams are made of, my dreams, at least!

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, through Bruce's 18 inch reflector was incredible! Magnificent! Huge! It was glorious in my own scope too! I was able to really put my 9mm Nagler to good use on this night. Details, the surrounding clusters and nearby NGC objects stood out on this night for me!

Mark Taylor and I had a lot of fun trying to locate M107. It was easy to find in the sky. We just couldn't find it on the star chart - heck it was the Phillips Color Star Atlas we were looking at. It's good for stellar spectra projects but lousy for Messiers! And thanks Mark for the detailed Pluto star field drawing, on the back of an envelope - or was it on a cocktail napkin? It was easy to see the star field, but I think our eyes were tired and wanted bigger prey than tiny cold and distant Pluto. Pluto, Neptune and Uranus were our shallow sky conquests early in the evening. Mercury was first, of course! And I always salute mother Earth at every star party! It's our planet, after all!

The Helix Nebula NGC 7293 was my personal favorite object to hunt, catch and release. It was great in EVERYBODY's scopes. In Michelle's 18 inch obsession in particular. But I must admit I loved how it looked in my own scope, with the ultrablock filter and without the filter! Remarkable! Every object looked fantastic in Rashad's blue stickerscope! And he hunted and grabbed them with remarkable endurance and agility, and he was able to explain every object! Get's an A+ in my book!

The Cocoon Nebula IC5146 and open cluster was an easy one.

Barnard's Galaxy, NGC 6822 - ok so we saw it!

IC 1311, a Cassiopeia cluster cloaked in cloudy nebulosity was pretty.

Stephen's Quintet in Mark Wagner's Garciascope, as in Jerry Garcia! - 3 of the 5 for sure! I was Grateful!

NGC246 and 247 in Andromeda. Congratulations to Marsha Robinson for bagging her next to last M, M77 in Cetus. That's everyone's next to last M! Now on to M74, Mars!

I could wax poetic about all of these and more, but time to return home to our own galaxy for a nitecap!

There were quite a few observers interested in their first real savoring of Jupiter and Saturn in some time, even tho it was late (or early depending on your perspective). Eight or so scopes were being manned..um personed till dawn. One of my scopes (a 6 inch dob - my other was a 12.5 dob) was being operated by a young boy named...Alex? He really was thrilled by those planets and the moon near dawn! While we all took quick peeks during our DSO times (I used my left eye) till quite late, when I retired from the deep sky, I was able to really concentrate on our two gas giant neighbors.

The detail visible on Jupiter was so incredibly beautiful that I was just awestruck. I usually observe with my 10 and 12.5 inch reflectors, but this was my first time viewing Jupiter and Saturn upside down. Where north means north and south means south, and through Rich's AP 180 mm APO refractor, no less. I was a bit confused at first. The NEB was on the north side of the equator. The SEB was on the south. What a concept! The K(knobby) NEB showed many projections, giving it a ropy appearance. The thicker SEB, showed, among other features, a large arching festoon, a darkish comma shaped feature. It was fascinating to watch as the planet quickly rotated over the period of a few hours of viewing. The festoon moved left. Another confusing refractor view I had to get used to. The moons were fun to watch in their majestic journey round and round.

The north belts were so distinct, and the zones between were so clear. I usually sketch when I observe planets and lunar features, but a three hour drive to reach Fremont Peak, combined with the heat and the lateness meant viewing the wondrous sites was about all I could handle. Along with trying to commit to memory or briefly note in my observing log some details was about all the effort I could muster. I just can't wait for Jupiter to rise a little earlier!

What could we do for an encore? Why, Saturn of course! I was prepared for the upside down tilt. I was unprepared for the crisp detail of the rings, and the shadow of the rings on the planet. The Cassini division, a good visual test for new observers and new optics, was so gaping! The first A ring detail I saw, near the outer edge was the Encke Minimum, a shadowy darkening of detail on the edge of ring A. The aforementioned Cassini division between A and B was a gimme. Ring C was plainly visible as well. I personally spotted 5 moons, but without sketching them over a period of days I didn't commit to memory which 5 I saw. That and I was just plain lazy. I've seen more, but I was a happy camper!

At last the moon rose through the Coulter Pines. (You all know that Coulter Telescopes were named for the Coulter Pines found only on Fremont Peak didn't you?) Morning had spoken. The sky was pink and blue. The owls that hooted earlier, were climbing into their dark spots for a morning nap. It had been an incredible night of observing, capped off with spectacular planets.