The public show at Fremont Peak Observatory went very well this past Saturday.

I started getting excited about the evening as I watched the fog roll in from Monterey Bay. As Jane was setting up outside the observatory and talking about the sunspots being seen all week, I scrounged in the observatory and found a lovely sun scope -- a C5 with a solar filter. It set up very nicely on a picnic table. The six large spot groups were spectacular. Jane did some nice sketches.

(I'm not sure I'm going to remember all the names correctly.) We were joined by Jane's associates from Project Astro, all visiting Fremont Peak for the first time: Al Stern, president of SFAA, Kirsten, a full time staff member at Morrison Planetarium, and Alice, another astronomer and teacher.

The 30" Challenger is in excellent condition. I was a little surprised to find the roof turnbuckles detached when I arrived, but I was careful to put them back before leaving. The two slide projectors and their controller gave some intermittent problems that might be cabling, but they didn't fail during the presentation, so that went very well.

I had about 35 visitors for the slide talk, just barely enough to fit into the room with some standees. The first thing I did was to herd them all out to the front of the observatory to watch an Iridium flare scheduled for 8:35. It was a mag -1 flare that appeared right on schedule 30 degrees up in the indigo northern twilight. It was a lovely sight, and drew a nice round of applause. I take full credit, naturally. :)

This slide talk is a little different for me in that I was working from extensive notes to go with the light pollution slide set. The problem with that is trying to keep the notes lit during the talk. My flashlight failed during the show, and I was lucky enough to have Kirsten right behind me with a spare ready to go. I'm going to solve this for the next one by having a clipboard and a gooseneck-mounted red light. Trying to hold the light in the crook of your neck while pointing out features on the screen with a laser pointer isn't terribly successful.

I was operating the 30" solo tonight, though I had a lot of help from Jane and Al with the crowd. With the teapot high in the South, I went to M8 the Lagoon Nebula for my first target, with no filter. In retrospect, it wasn't a great first object. The object is large and vague with not many bright visible features. I might better have gone for the trifid or ring or one of the globulars. While waiting for Jupiter to rise, we visited M11, my favorite open cluster.

One of my visitors was really eager to see Uranus. I knew it would take me a while to locate it, and it's such a tiny featureless disk that it took me a while to warm to the idea. But once handed the challenge, I really couldn't let it go. :) I brought up TheSky on the observatory computer to display a chart for Uranus, and managed to track it down. Later in the evening I just had to get Neptune too, to have the pair in the log book. :) Despite their uninteresting appearance, the visitors get a real kick out of seeing the rare planets.

M27 the Dumbbell drew the most ooo's and ahh's besides Jupiter and Saturn. M31 the Andromeda galaxy was a treat with a prominent dust lane, and high-contrast views of its satellite galaxies.

The hot fudge sundae of the evening for me and Jane (if I may be so presumptious) was a beautiful trip through the Veil nebula, both sides, with an unlabeled filter that I found in the eyepiece drawer and a low-power eyepiece.

The occasional stiff breezes during the evening meant having to lock the clutches on the telescope fairly tight. I like to give people the option of moving the telescope a little to get better perception of the object, but it was too tight to do that much. Seeing was only fair through the evening, but the sky transparency was impressive.

In miscellaneous notes, the observatory logbook is missing. I recorded a few notes on a sheet of loose paper. Since I'm repeating my program in two weeks, and again two weeks after that, I left my slides in a pair of empty carousels that I'd intended to bring home with me. Instead I left them on the long staging table in the presentation room. Maybe they'll be undisturbed there.

One of these days I'll learn to use the encoders on the telescope and synchronize TheSky. :)