Friday, August 21, 1998, 6:45 PM -

There I sat in the worst traffic jam I'd ever experienced, on Interstate 580 between Castro Valley and Livermore. Having allocated 2.5 hours of driving time until sunset for what is normally a 1.5 hour drive, I left home feeling confident that there'd be plenty of time to set up the 0.457 (18") telescope in daylight, pitch my tent and enjoy the idyllically beautiful twilight of SAV, our observing site east of Mt. Hamilton. Now, I wasn't so certain. I got off the freeway at Vasco Road, knowing that I now had well under an hour to stop at the "last gas" on the route to take care of necessities and drive the 35 tortuous one-lane mountain miles up Mines Road to the observing site. So as it turned out, the first half of the trip was the slowest ever, while on the second half I set a new personal speed record for the beautiful, uncrowded but devilishly steep and twisty Mines Road. I caught up with Paul Sterngold along the way, and after stopping at the SAV Roadhouse at the intersection with Del Puerto Canon Road to Patterson, we zipped off to our sunset arrival on the back-forty of our host's ranch.

Although not a problem in the same league with the traffic jam, we found our site (the entire ranch, in fact) covered with tarweed, a rather pungent and pretty yellow-blooming plant that is liberally covered with the stickiest substance imaginable, to better allow it's seeds to be carried off on whatever animal passes by. In short order, Paul's and my legs were also liberally covered with the stuff. Being of the opinion that it wouldn't be prudent to get the stuff on our optics, we quickly put on long pants and laid down large tarps and set up the equipment on top of them. By and by we managed to get most everything erected prior to darkness, and an enthusiastic young couple arrived from Modesto, invited friends of the gatekeeper, who also had a new C-8 they wanted to try out. With coyotes beginning their nighttime songs, the promise of elk bugles to come later, and gobs of sticky yellow flowers wadding on our boots, we began our observing session, and Paul began his polar alignment for photography with his new CCD camera.

The young couple, whose names were Dennis and Gina, were quite new to telescope astronomy and so much of the first hour or two was dedicated to entertaining them and helping them get used to their new scope. After collimating on Altair, the first thing I swung the 0.457 to was M4, a bright globular cluster near Antares in Scorpius. The bright and well-resolved mass of stars made quite an impression on the youngsters, and the dense "rib" that passes through its center was conspicuous, setting this object apart from others of it's ilk.

M4 looked so good that a few more nearby globulars were in order. We used a 9mm Nagler for about 225x on most of these. NGC 6144, a little m9.1 globular next to Antares, looked large, well-resolved and loosely organized in appearance, well worth returning to. NGC 6342, m9.9, came off as moderately-sized, fairly bright, pretty well resolved, with a well-condensed center, sort of a smaller version of M5 (my favorite and a great showpiece of the sky). Globular M80 was much brighter, of course, very well resolved nearly to its brilliantly condensed core at 225x. Ditto for Globular M9, the last one on the list for now.

It was by now about 10:00PM, and the seeing had not yet settled down, although transparency was becoming quite good. Despite the long-ago disappearance of El Nino and the apparent early death of La Nina, this evening was still under the influence of the unusually thick marine layer that has been plaguing Bay Area viewing for much of the summer. Normally, SAV is quite dry in the summer, and on this evening it was not soggy by any means, but objects were beginning to become tacky and cool. Fortunately the heavy dew would hold off for several hours, but the influence of humidity on the transparency was noticeable.

By now the arc of the Milky Way was high and bright overhead, if not yet severely etched around the edges. We turned to some bright Sagittarius objects, starting with M8, the Lagoon Nebula. At 92x it was extremely bright, filling the field to all corners and spreading fainter tendrils and nebulous waves far beyond as well. The Ultrablock filter chiselled its definition, and I made a promise to myself to come back a bit later when the seeing improved to look for Bok Globules in it, which I believe may be visible when the atmosphere is quite steady (I never kept that promise as my fickle heart wandered elsewhere). Before leaving, I did put 460x on the scope to examine the "hourglass" a bit, a region of the nebula that revealed a violent whirling interstellar tornado in a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope about a year ago. No tornadoes tonight, but a fine demonstration of the bright hourglass shape.

Then to Open Cluster NGC 6520 and Barnard 86, a most delightful pair of objects. The OC is a bright compact group of stars at 92x, set softly against a nearly-hidden dark nebula immediately behind, which in turn covers the gentle but unyielding glow of the Milky Way. Next to this gem, the dark cloud B86 creates the impression of a deep hole punching through the dense starry background. It is in the rough shape of a fat boomerang, pointing in the direction of the NGC open cluster. The overall setting is delicious, and in a dark sky elicits expressions of wonder from those who view it.

Pegasus is now beginning to rise high, and it is a wellspring of rich galactic treasures. NGC 7331, a favorite nearly edge-on spiral with a bright nucleus, was seen to be flanked to it's northeast by some smaller and fainter galaxies whose identification escape me (I gotta get a better star atlas!). In any case, two of these little apparent companions were easily seen, one close in and similar to 7331, but smaller and fainter, and one a bit farther out but still in the same 92x filed, and round. Two others were suspected, and a better chart would have aided confirmation.

When I asked Mark Wagner at an earlier gathering this season how to find Hickson 92, Stephan's Quintet, from NGC 7331, he replied, "Go south, young man." Taking his advice, I went south and just a single field away was the famous five. By this time, having suspected that the seeing and transparency both were improving based on the NGC 7331 companions' visibility, I thought that these five might be all discernible at higher power. Using 225x, each one of the five became evident - the two brighter northern and eastern galaxies were plainly seen, the two that are extremely close together were nonetheless separable as distinct attached patches, and the faint southern member showed its feeble glow with averted vision and some deep breathing exercises (ah, can't get enough of that oxygen!).

Earlier in the week I had been perusing some of the information placed on the Web by Steve Gottlieb, Ray Cash, Jim Shields and Richard Jakiel. Their pages are a treasure trove of observing tips for many fabulous deep sky objects, including the one I shifted to next, Barnard's Galaxy, a gem that lies about 10 degrees northeast of the handle of the Sagittarius teapot. It is one of the first faint dwarf galaxies found to accompany the Milky Way on it's journey through space as part of the local group, and one of the few to be close enough for the easy resolution of physical features such as bright stars and nebulae. Turning the scope to it at 92x, it showed faintly but unmistakeably as a large hazy patch with some elongation to it, and closer inspection revealed some areas of haze with more substance to them. A quick zip up to 225x began to reveal a fine-grained mottling of the haze, with a few bright points of light poking out distinctively. I am not familiar enough with the object to know whether any of these were stars of that nearby galaxy or not, but the mottling was a giveaway that it was indeed more than just a nebula. Back down to 92x, the Ultrablock filter made the whole galaxy more plain, as it does for a few other nearby galaxies; more importantly, it helped to bring out a number of nebulous regions within the galaxy that were nearly invisible without filtration. Richard Jakiel described a number of these on the webpages that I explored, and of the several he listed I could pretty easily see three of them at 145x, with a few more faintly suspected. At 225x they became more obvious even without a filter. This object will bear further viewing well, especially at a really dark sky site - it is every bit as detailed an fascinating as, say, spiral galaxy M51, and it is well placed for high summer observing.

Next, a few easy objects - M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, was it's usual beautiful self; and the trio M31, 32 and 110 rested easily and distinctively in the 40mm MK-70 eyepiece, M31 not quite as sharply defined as at Lassen National Park last month but with enough dust lane detail to be a worthy low-power subject just the same. Dennis and Gina were interested and inspired by this view, and so was I.

The Bubble Nebula seemed like a good target, what with Cassiopeia rising prominently in the NE, so the scope was swung 'round toward open cluster M52, a good jumping off point. M52 is a treasure, a beautiful cluster of perhaps 200 stars that fills a medium power field. Nonetheless, the evening was not a total triumph - the Bubble, having been fairly easily observed in my 8" telescope a year ago at at Del Valle Park, was nowhere to be seen this evening despite the clearly superior conditions and larger telescope. After several frustrating minutes staring straight at it's illuminating star and using several kinds of filters, I decided to move on to other things...the Bubble will have to wait a while.

Just as a curiosity, Dennis and Gina were shown NGC 404, a pretty bright round galaxy that resides in the same field as bright star Beta Andromedae. The two make a striking pair, the bright pinpoint and the faint cottonball. The galaxy was plenty bright enough to overcome the distracting light of the star, which is not always the case with type of arrangement.

The seeing was steadily improving, with the Milky Way through Cygnus into Cassiopeia gaining enormously in clarity and naked-eye detail. As the dew settled, the atmosphere also seemed to gain in transparency, with the entire sky appearing darker at midnight than at at 10:00PM. After routing out the Ring Nebula for the first time (not an easy task in a small SCT with the object overhead) Dennis and Gina decided to call it a night; we bade them farewell and a safe ride to their overnight quarters, and invited them back again - we may have some new TACers in Modesto. With the better atmospherics and smaller group, I decided to try for a couple of obscure planetary nebulae. NGC 7354 in Cepheus yielded a small, moderately bright irregular ring of m12.2, made much easier with an O-III filter; the magnitude 15 central star was not visible, but I did not try higher power than 225x on this one. NGC 7139 was much larger but fainter, presenting an irregular mottled disc at 225x. Again, the O-III filter helped enormously, and again, the central star was invisible, although this star is m18 and would have been tough under perfect conditions.

M33 was next, and I came to this object this evening with the memory of its appearance in Alan Nelms' 18" scope at Pacheco Pass almost a year ago, and what an object it was under that very dark sky! Bright spiral arms swung wide and plain, heavily mottled from numerous dust lanes and H-II regions, with a bright nucleus anchoring the core. I aimed the scope toward it, and knowing that the sky wasn't Pacheco Pass dark, I peered into the eyepiece. It wasn't too bad just the same, with much of the detail and contrast visible on this night as it had had at that earlier time, even if not with the same overall punch from the darker sky. The Deep-Sky filter undoubtedly gave it a boost, showing off the arms in greater splendor. The filter does reduce the sheer resolution of the view however, and overall the unfiltered darker sky view is preferred.

Nearby in Andromeda, the Abell 262 galaxy cluster was calling. It is anchored by m12.2 galaxy NGC 708, surrounded in close proximity by about 6 other galaxies of varying magnitude and visibility, and with various outliers seen extending out from the core in several directions. The Abell clusters typically contain several tens to hundreds of galaxies, and in this portion of the sky several clusters (including this one) comprise a supercluster that spreads across several degrees and incorporates many thousands of individual galaxies both bright and dim. It is fascinating and humbling to think that, when observing these galaxy groupings, one is observing a part of one of the largest known structures in the cosmos.

Galaxies weren't the only things astronomer Abell catalogued; he also went for exceedingly faint planetary nebulae. For fun, I tried a couple, notably Abell 74 in Vulpecula, choosing it for it's position high in the sky. It was invisible to me, even with filters; a darker sky and perhaps a lot more experience will reveal this phantom, and others like it, to me.

Jones 1 in Pegasus was a different story. I had heard about this object for years, but had never attempted to track it down. Tonight, though, I was in the mood for something that wasn't on one of the big-three lists (M, NGC or IC), so here went nothing...I got out the coordinates and scribbled a little symbol (in pen - optimistic I guess) on SkyAtlas2000, and went for it. I looked and looked with the O-III filter for several minutes, and saw nothing. I thought I had struck out, when instead I struck the scope by accident and BINGO - Jones 1 appeared. This is a beautiful and distinctive planetary nebula, if faint. In the O-III filter at 92x, it presents a large, smooth, complete ring, but the ring almost diminishes to invisibility at the north and south ends. The ring, despite it's smoothness, appears thicker on the east and west sides, and possibly with some texture as though it were loosely woven out of strands of silk. Upon viewing, Paul agreed that this is a beautiful object, and I will return to it again and again. Notably, it is faintly visible without any filter, which makes it's late discovery a little bit surprising; but then, how many things have been right under our noses for decades before they became apparent? More than I want to count.

After that triumph, time to treat ourselves to total eye candy. the seeing was excellent, and we aimed toward Jupiter and Saturn at full aperture. Jupiter was, in a word, breathtaking. It had never looked so good to me before. At magnifications from 225x to 460x, it was full of detail and color, sharp to the edges and with numerous bands, swirls, barges, festoons, and white and red spots of many sizes embedded in the north and south equatorial bands. It was dazzling. I am not a planetary observer, really, and so it is hard for me to say much here except to spout superlatives. Ditto for Saturn, with much color on the orb and with the crepe ring and Encke/Keeler (?) division readily visible. These, plus the scattering of moons around it, made it a view upon which to linger, and linger I did.

With the full darkness of the wee hours upon us, I looked for some more Hickson Galaxy groups. I tried for H88 in Serpens; in spite of what should have been an easy star hop, no cluster was to be found. Again, a good star chart would have been invaluable I think. The search for Hickson 93 in Pegasus was more fruitful, yielding a nice group of five galaxies, the three southern ones (A - C) quite bright and easy, but with D much dimmer and with faint member E at the edge of detection in the northeast corner of the group.

3:00 AM. Getting tired. One more bright galaxy - NGC 7814 in the southwestern corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Of m10.5, it is bright and fairly oval, with a very bright center. The NGC description notes a dust lane, and for a fleeting second I thought I could see a pencil-thin dust lane (a la the Sombrero) via averted imagination, but I won't count that one.

I went and looked over Paul's shoulder - he had been having a ball with his new camera equipment, and he nabbed a few shots of some fine objects to view on his computer screen. Earlier he had the Swan, and now he was futzing with M33. Both presented fine views as seen through his Genesis refractor, and I am anxious to see his results on the Web.

My eyelids almost shutting, I crawled into my tent and let the coyotes and bugling elk serenade me off to my precious few hours of sleep before the 7 o'clock shotgun discharges (!) heralded the rise of Sol over the eastern hills. It had been a classic SAV night, one I hope to repeat many more times (except for the gunfire - darn those hillbillies!).