That was The Plan for the 22 August HVAG star party; see the sights of Aquarius. And it mostly happened, with a couple of interesting twists along the way.

Conditions out at Grant Ranch were promising as sunset approached. No wind, clear sky, nice temperatures. The only odd thing was that there was more color in the sky to the south and southeast than there was to the northwest (where the sun was setting, and where the color is supposed to be--isn't it?). Smoke from the great tire fire? But no matter, whatever it was seemed to be far enough away to not be a big problem.

There were about 10-15 scopes in attendence, ranging from a homemade 75mm refractor and 4.5" Meade reflector on the small end, up to a couple of 10" dobs and one 10" LX-200.

While waiting for enough stars to come out to start starhopping, I started with a stellar spectrum (Vega). Surprisingly for Grant Ranch, where we usually only get the occasional camper or two coming by, there were a number of people who wanted to view the spectrum and listen the how-and-why of absorbtion lines.

Next up was newbies. Some folks who had just acquired a 4.5" reflector on a little German equatorial mount came up and asked for some help in getting started. First lesson was how to find Polaris, align the right ascension axis on it, learn what it means to have an equatorial mount and why we polar align. Next, the finder scope had to be aligned to the main tube (this drove me nuts for a while, since my finder is correct image and theirs was not, so all the adjustments seemed to work backwards--like trying to write while looking in the mirror). After that was all out of the way, they asked how to find M13 so I coached them on where Hercules was and how to locate M13 in the keystone. It was in due course found and looked at with some considerable satisfaction on their part. Thereafter, I set them a couple of other fairly easy targets (First a peek at Mizar/Alcor, then a very short star hop starting on Vega to the double-double). They were able to do this and seemed to be having a good time as they got the feel of their new scope.

After that, it was on to view the sights in Aquarius, which I have never really visited before. First up was M2, a nice globular. When I mentioned to the observers nearby that M2 was in view, a line--never had one of those out here before--of 6 formed at the scope. Next up was the Saturn Nebula. It was found easily enough but was not a dramatically impressive planetary tonight. It was small, though bright. I did not see the the inner and outer 'rings' that make it Saturn-like. Instead it was rather elliptical in shape and somewhat less bright in the center than the periphery. M73 and M72 are nearby. M73 is, well, uninspiring at best, being only 3 or 4 stars. M72 is a reasonable globular, though not nearly as bright as the "biggies" of its kind.

Earlier, when I was doing Vega's spectrum, I mentioned to one of the viewers that he should come by later and I'd show Antares as well (it wasn't out yet when I did Vega around dusk). He came by with his kids about now, so it was back to spectra. Antares nicely showed many molecular absorbtion lines throughout its red-heavy spectrum. We compared to Altair (Vega was straight overhead and made for mildly awkward viewing) and its very different blue-heavy spectrum with hydrogen absorbtion lines in the blue and violet.

When the spectrum show was over, I completely forgot to go back and look up the Helix nebula in Aquarius. Instead, it was on into Pegasus for M15. Now, that's a fine globular. I ogled it for some time. No sign of the small planetary that is in it.

Time for a break! Vampiric photonic thievery at other scopes (whatever they had in view) was the object. It must have been a low-energy night or something, because some scopes had already folded up shop and there was more chatting than observing at others. I did find the LX-200 hunting for M13...its electronics had gone -fzzt- and they were in manual mode. These people had an interesting system. They had some chairs and a big, fluffy blanket, so that one of the two couples could use the scope while the other warmed up in what looked like positively sinful comfort. M13 got found and everyone viewed it.

Jupiter had risen some time ago by now; I had put off watching it until it got up off the horizon. The seeing had been pretty promising all evening, so getting back to the C8, it seemed the time was ripe. I swung over there just about the time that a chill breeze appeared and the seeing went very soft. One of the other observers nearby noted the same thing, and thought that a cooler layer above us must had decided to pour down into Hall's Valley. Not being a meteorologist, I deferred to his view and silently contemplated Murphy's Law as applied to planets: "Seeing will be excellent as long as your telescope is not pointed at a planet; aiming at one will cause immediate degradation of atmospheric stability."

So, hoping against hope that the wavy air might be a passing phenomenon, I did a couple of old favorites: Double-cluster, Andromeda Galaxy. Back to Jupiter. Not much better, but there were some moments of clarity. Saturn came up...but was really soft down so low. Stuck with Jupiter for a while, and got a few nice views here and there where you could see 3-4 minor bands as well as the two big ones. My neighbor, also with a C8, was interested in Pentax eyepieces, so we compared views of things with a 14mm Pentax against the 13mm Nagler. Of course the seeing dominated everything, so no differences could be seen (if there were any). He was contemplating acquiring a higher-power eyepiece, so I put the 7mm Pentax on so he could at least look through it. He thought it was easier to use (eye positioning) than the shorter focal length Naglers he'd tried.

We found ourselves more or less alone, the last of the Mohicans. Everyone else had been chilled out by the persistent cold breezes and was gone. It was coming up quick on midnight, so we packed it in too.