The Plan this weekend was to go out twice, to Oakridge Road on Friday to look at things S. and W., and Grant Ranch on Saturday to look at things E. And, amazingly enough, I acutally got off my *** and really did get out twice, although as usual The Plan was not completely followed. Good conditions were found both nights for near-town sites: steady seeing, and no wind worth mentioning at either place, shirtsleeve temperatures even after midnight (one short exception to both at Grant Ranch on Sat for about 10 min when a little breeze came up late). Skies were not especially dark (5.2 to 5.4 my est); there was a fair amount of water vapor lurking around in the air (which showed up as little cloud puffs over the Santa Cruz and Diablo ranges in the afternoons). The water content was probably due to that southerly flow that also brought so many clouds and T-storms to the Sierras this weekend. At ground level though, dew was essentially non-existent both nights.

Friday I didn't get a lot of things looked at because I was using two telescopes at the same time, necessitating double star hopping (Computers? Phoo). This was the first time out for the Vixen BT80 binocular scope. I also elected to hunt for things down in Scorpius, thus bumping into the Oakridge trees more ...low... than once and finding what I was finding wasn't findable.

First target was M4. There is a significant set of differences between a double-80 binocular achromat and an 8" SCT. The latter is much brighter and shows a lot more differentiation on globulars. No surprise there, of course, due to the aperture advantage. However, M4 appears amazingly round in the BT80. There is a strong optical illusion (for this observer, anyway) that the brighter stars are nearer, and the fainter ones further away. This effect was repeated with M7, and indeed with every cluster I looked at all Fri. evening.

After having investigated the "tree line" in Scorpius, I resolved to go to a part of the sky I had not visited before, the stretch below the Cygnus-Sag. Milky Way, i.e. eastern Sagittarius, Capricornus and Aquarius. There are not a lot of targets marked on Sky Atlas 2000 out there, but off to M75 it was. After that, it was off to M30. These are OK globulars, but hardly best of breed. I next went for the Helix nebula, but found that it was hidden behind an observatory dome on the Oakridge site.

Though hardly S. or W., I was moved to fiddle around in Aquila for a while. M71 was the first target, and it was fine and bright. Nearby cluster H20 was very shy and difficult at best to pick out of the Milky Way. Next up were the planetaries 6804 and 6781, neither of which I could find (setting a tone for the weekend insofar as planetaries goes).

Sat back and watched the stars wheel by for some time, and then noticed Jupiter was up, although not far up. Seeing was at best weak that low down, but the major bands showed and (in the SCT) some of the fainter ones now and again. Still, it was quite nice to see Jupiter again. I resisted the temptation to wait for Saturn and packed it in for Friday.

Some comments on the BT80. It is light to carry and quick to set up; the alt-az mount is easy to use with decent slo-mo controls on each axis. Mine has a touch of initial slippage on the azimuth slo-mo, but not enough to fret over. It was for most of the night used with a pair of Vixen 8-24mm zoom eyepieces installed. That made changing magnifications a little fussy in refocus and matching image sizes eye-to-eye. The BT80 does not have an overall focus knob; each eyepiece is done separately. However, the Vixen ep's were close enough in manufacture that using the marked positions on the barrel gave good results for image size match. In general, observing with a scope that has a correct orientation image is much easier than going back and forth from finder to main scope as I do with the SCT. It is as natural as using a pair of binoculars (which, in fact, the BT80 really is, but with a long focal length and interchangeable eyepieces). The view is pretty bright for an "80mm" instrument. Although the detail may be like an 80mm single-eye scope, the two 80's together stuff just about the same light into two eyes than a 114mm scope does into 1 eye.

Saturday at Grant Ranch was a scheduled star party, and a surprisingly large contingent of scopes assembled there, at least 15. There were 6 C8's alone. Biggest scope was 10" (dob), smallest a tripod-mounted set of 20X80 binocs. We were in a different spot, up the hill from the usual one (taken over by a mob of campers). There must have been some sage growing around the site, because as astronomers and visitors walked in the area, the sweet fragrance from the plants wafted through--very pleasant, rather like observing in a spice shop.

Saturday's Plan was decided after it got dark. Why bother to Plan when you don't ever follow it, anyway? First up, because the seeing seemed especially good, was a look at the double-double in Lyra and everything separated easily. Star images were very steady. When in Lyra, of course, you must stop at the Ring Nebula (very nice tonight) or lose observer points. Next,I peeked at Vega through the diffraction grating and was surprised to see a very evident absorbtion line in the blue part of the spectrum. It has to be one of the hydrogen lines, although I don't know which one. There were hints of other lines as well; they'd sort of be there a moment, then not, or just the ends of them (two little indents directly opposite each other on the sides of the spectral bar of color) would show. Intrigued by this, I looked at Deneb; same blue absorbtion line was visible there, too. Skittered over to Arcturus, and found some almost-visible lines but not the bright hydrogen line of the two A-class stars (no surprise, since Arcturus is much cooler than either). Neat. Usually the seeing isn't good enough for me to find individual spectral absorbtion lines.

Next on the Free-form Agenda, I elected to wander through Cephus and Lacerta, a portion of the Milky Way I have not yet visited much. This quest actually started in Cassiopeia, at beta-Cas. and 7789, a wonderful cluster I always sneak a look at. Next target was a little bunch of three small clusters. Of these 7790 and H21 were visible, but 7788 was not. M52 was next, and very nice. Tried for the nearby planetary 7635, nothing. Did not even show with the diffraction grating. Cluster 7510, a bright little cutie, was next. Continuing west along the Milky Way, planetary I1470 was not at home for the evening. Indeed, except for the Ring, I was skunked on every planetary I looked for on Saturday evening. Cluster 7419 was the next target, but this one I could not pick out of the Milky Way background. I found a clot of stars, but it was in the wrong place on the star chart and probably just the Milky Way being the Milky Way. Planetary 7354? BZZT! Thank you for playing; try again! Cluster 7380 was there, but hard to see. Cluster 7281 was not showing although nearby 7261 was. 7235 was also very hard to pick out from the background, but seemed to be where the star chart said it should be. Going somewhat north from the galactic equator, I searched in vain for cluster 7160 and planetary 7139. Coming back south again, I.1396 was not obvious. It has a big symbol on the map, and while there were a lot of nice stars there, it wasn't exactly obvious that this was a "cluster" or just a nice bunch of Milky Way stars along the same line of sight. The nebulosity which surrounds I.1396 was definitely not visible. Small clusters 7128 and 7127 were next; neither is very obvious. However, a little further on to the west, 7086 does seem to stand out against the Milky Way. From there, it is a short hop to M39. After ogling some bright cluster photons a while there, I went for the Cocoon nebula, but did not find it. Next up was cluster 7209 just over the border into Lacerta, it is a nice one and worth looking up when you're touring this part of the sky.

Break time! Went around to the various scopes and found the vast majority targeting classic summer Milky Way items, M22, M8, M7, M20, M17, M27, M57, with the Great Galaxy in Andromeda and Double Cluster in Perseus thrown in for good measure . This assuaged my guilt at not spending time to look at all those wonders. A walking tour of the Milky Way...what a concept.

Getting back to my own scope, I went after the Helix nebula again (though in retrospect, the earlier flops with faint planetaries didn't make this a promising move). And I didn't find it, again. I suspect everyone had to have one of "those" objects at all times on their list of unfound objects. Having recently gotten M109 off my personal list of unfounds, something had to come along and replace it--looks like the Helix is the next Cause.

People started to tear down in droves right at midnight. I borrowed one last look, at the Veil; it appeared as a slightly greyish streak across the region of 52 Cygni, with no filamentary detail visible (8" Newt with UHC filter in use) and then joined the general retreat.