Before I get into the wonderful weekend in the Sierras I wanted to mention the sunset I experienced on my flight back from visiting my folks in Ohio. Leaving in the late afternoon our westbound plane slowed the impending sunset considerably. It had occurred to me that I might see a green flash at sunset so I was not surprised to see one just as the sun dipped behind very distant clouds. The flash was so quick I even thought I might have been imagining it… until the planes movement allowed the sun to reappear from behind the clouds and disappeared behind more clouds again with *another green flash! This happened one more time before the sun finally was too low to peek out from behind the clouds again.

Last year I missed Lassen because of unfortunate timing (my wife's 30th birthday party). I still planned to go for the last two nights but my son sustained a minor injury that prevented us from going. Since I missed last year's event I was ever so much looking forward to Lassen this year with my family. But Lassen was not to happen again this year for us!

I don't remember exactly when I realized that starting my own software consulting business might result in the business directing me more than me directing it! Unfortunately, last month a client required me to visit a customer site in China during the same week of the Lassen star party. Bejing was very interesting and worth the trip, but my mind was on Lassen while there. My trip took me to a Chinese ISP so I had internet access. I remember looking at the visible-light satellite images of northern California and seeing the clouds but somehow I just could not believe that the skies were cloudy at night. I was saddened to find out after returning that only one night was reasonably good. Well, there was always next year!

While in Ohio I brought my notebook with me and was monitoring TAC. Because of correspondence with Marsha Robinson and Mark Wagner I found out that there was room for me to go to what would turn out to be a superb deep sky site in the Sierras. I was told that the famous veteran observers Steve Gottlieb and Jim Shields often use the site and they would actually be part of the group! "Wow!", I thought! Mark warned me that the site had little room and no facilities so I wouldn't want to bring any of my family. I responded within minutes of reading his message without even waiting for an "OK" from my wife! Luckily, she was fine with the idea so I was set!

In addition to those I already mentioned, Richard Navarrete was part of the group, which met up at the Coffee Tree restaurant in Vacaville just before noon on Friday, August 21st. Our next stop was the first exit at Truckee on highway 80, where we would refuel and get some lunch. After a little Laurel and Hardy act of trying to find a place to eat we set off on the next leg of the trip, to Bassetts. Steve and Jim invited me to go along with them to a nicer restaurant but I was not really hungry. I instead caravanned to Bassets with Richard in the front and Mark and Marsha heading up the rear.

Bassets was a quaint little "town"…actually all I saw of it was the town store. I bought some additional supplies in the store and talked with Mark, Marsha, and Richard until Steve and Jim showed up. Remarkably, neighbors of Steve's parents happened to be at the store and recognized him. What a coincidence!

The last few miles to the site was on a narrow road a little wider in most spots than the one leading up to Fremont Peak. At one point we had to pull way off the road to allow 3 large trucks hauling logs to go by. (They were really in a hurry to get *up* the hill…Ok, just kidding… they were going down! )

We arrived at the site around 4:30 pm. The actual site was a dirt area at the end of the paved portion of the road. There was a scattering of trees around which mostly took out a little of the Southern sky. Sierra Butte Peak could be seen near south. I believe it is 8592 feet. Our site was at 7200 feet.

Everyone picked locations, set up, ate dinner, and waited for dark. Interestingly, a number of hikers and campers in cars stopped or slowed down to take a look at our scopes. Some of them even came back at night. As one of our group already pointed out in a previous report, it was simply amazing that even in the middle of nowhere the public was able to find us!

When darkness fell we were treated to extremely dark skies! The kind by which the Milky Way was almost bright enough to read by! Indeed the skies at this Sierra site were at least as good, if not better, than the best nights I've seen at Lassen.

I brought two telescopes, my 4" refractor and my 17.5" truss-tube Dob. I brought the refractor for a number of reasons: 1) to possibly use for some CCD astrophotography, and 2) for wide-field views of a couple of objects (California nebula and the Veil, in particular), 3) for solar viewing, and 4) viewing Jupiter and Saturn. The first night I left the refractor packed.

My observing program was sort of haphazard. I wanted to first view many of the brightest objects then track down some fainter objects. First up was M57. The center star was easily visible in my 17.5" scope at about 200x. Using 400x I was able to glimpse a second star in the ring about 30% of the time.

On to M13… absolutely stunning! Several "strings" of stars were readily noticeable.. Had to look at 6207 while I was there and of course, IC 4617, the faint galaxy located about halfway between 6207 and M13 near a faint trapezium of stars. From this site there was no doubt of 4617's presence, even at just 115x - it stood out without using averted vision. From Fremont Peak I usually have to use a higher magnification and averted vision to glimpse it.

Back down to M27, the Dumbell. It looked much fuller than it usually does from the Peak. At least a couple dozen interior stars were visible at about 115x.

Next up was M11…absolutely gorgeous from this site. At least a couple hundred stars were visible. Even without a filter I could see the small 13.4 planetary just to the east of it. According to Guide it is PK 027.4-03.5 and is about 15" in diameter.

Continuing on, M16 showed more nebulosity than I remember ever seeing at Fremont Peak. M17 looked extremely impressive. I never noticed that little patch of nebulosity to the north-east of M17. Probably could see it from the peak, it just seemed so vivid against this black velvet sky!

Next was M22 and a bunch of globulars in the area including 6642, 6440, 6401, 6638, M28, 6544, 6553, 6522, 6528, 6624, M54, 6569, M70, M69, 6652, and 6453.

Usually I cannot point below about 20 degrees above the horizon because my truss tubes hit my rocker box. This time I set up on a little hill angled toward the south. This afforded me an extra 8-10 degrees of southern coverage allowing me for the first time with this scope to see the Bug nebula (6302) in Scorpius. It looked like a figure 8 with some mottling in the lobes. A very interesting object!

As the night wore on Steve treated us to some interesting objects including some Abell planetaries, Jones 1, and Sh 2-71. Thanks Steve, those were very interesting objects. I had Hyndes' Planetary Nebula book with me so the next day I used that to plan Saturday night's session.

To finish out the evening, I looked at some of the bright autumn objects now rising. M31's dust lanes were fantastic. M33 was a naked eye object. A couple of H-II regions in M-33 were visible even without a filter. With a filter, more were visible. Lastly, I viewed Jupiter and Saturn for a period of time. Seeing was mediocre this night. Went to bed around 2 am…

The next morning I awoke around 7 am. As I sat up in my sport-utility vehicle I saw a small tan bear across the road. It seemed like he saw me since he ducked away pretty quickly. I thought about trying to get a picture of him…until I thought of the possibility of mama bear! I watched for 15 minutes waiting for him to come back out, but he didn't! So, I went out and only found chipmunks playing in the plants were the bear entered the woods.

That was not the last time I saw wildlife. A deer was grazing practically in our camp for about a half hour. Mark tried to give him some mellon but he didn't seem interested. We saw the same deer again (we think) just after nightfall near the same spot.

During the day I set up my refractor and looked at the sun. There were a couple of very nice sunspot groups visible. I left the scope set up for the night so that I might be able to view jupiter, and the whole Veil nebula.

The day went by quickly with lots of dust stirred up by the buses arriving every two hours with bicyclists. We had no idea that this was going to happen. Right after darkness arrived a number of cars showed up with campers/bicyclists. After talking with them about keeping their headlights and interior lights off (thanks Mark for supplying them with red tape!) we finally managed to get some continuous darkness. For a while there I think we feared this would be like Coulter Row at the Peak (especially on this night, the SJAA Star-B-Q was going on at the Peak!).

Well, first on my list was to track down some planetaries. With coordinates from the Hynde's book programmed into my Sky Commander DSC's I was able to find most of the planetaries rather easily. The nice thing about Abell planetaries is that they are generally large. Thus I used my 20 Nagler (100x) and my UHC filter most of the time. Abell 43 was big and dim, like a big bubble. I could see a relatively bright star in the center and two other stars of similar magnitude near the inside edge of the planetary, almost making an equilateral triangle. A-43 is magnitude 14.6.

A little harder was A-55. It looked about half the diameter of A-43 and dimmer. Not quite round, A-65 was larger than A-43 and looked oval to me. It's magnitude is listed at 13.2.

Abell 70 was interesting because it has a galaxy superimposed on it. In fact, it looks like the galaxy is in front of the planetary! The planetary itself looked like a much fainter M57.

Abell 72 was the hardest object! That was because the coordinates I entered were incorrect and also because it actually seemed fainter than the other Abells I tried.

Abell 82 was again pretty big. It reminded me of a faint M27. There was some mottling in the planetary as well. Abell 84 was a little bigger yet and dimmer than A-82, but it also had a dumbell shape.

The last Abell I tried was A-4. Smaller and brighter than most of the other Abells, it was easy to pick up at magnitude 14.4 in Perseus. There is a 15.5 PGC galaxy right next to it that was visible without the UHC filter.

I then went after Jones-1. This is a very interesting object shaped somewhat like a horseshoe. It is quite large at 5.5 arc-minutes which makes this nebula fainter than its magnitude (12.4) suggests.

After doing the Abells I worked with Mark on his Herschel objects. Mark is quite the starhopper, I must say! He really knows how to translate the stars on computer skymap into those he sees through the eyepiece. Personally, I've had difficulty matching up these starfields. Maybe, it is because I tend to use magnitudes in my attempts at translating the field to the eyepiece, and the Hubble Guide Star Catalogue is notorious for eroneous magnitudes. I think Mark must look more at the pattern of the stars and not the magnitudes on the screen. Is that right Mark?

Latrer that night I got my first full view of the Veil through my 4" refractor using a 35 mm panoptic. It just barely fit, but it fit. What a gorgeous sight! Later through my dob I examined the Veil in much more detail.

Also, with the refractor, I could see most of the California nebula when using an H-Beta filter. Holding the H-beta to my eye I could actually see the California nebula visually! I just love this site! I then showed Richard M31, M33, the Double Cluster, M13, and Jupiter through the refractor. After this I packed up the refractor and went to sleep around 2:30 am. It was certainly a wonderful two nights. I wanted to stay awake longer but I wanted even more to beat the Sunday traffic into the Bay Area.

Overall, it was a fantastic two nights of observing. It was great finally getting to a dark site after two years of absence from one! And the company was just fantastic. Thank you Mark, Marsha, Richard, and especially Steve and Jim for making this trip possible!