Saturday, September 19th marked the next to last public program and SFAA Star Party on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County California for the year. The conditions looked very promising, with a nice marine layer at times cloaking the San Francisco lights below our observing site at the Rock Springs parking lot. As usual, the stargazing was fronted by a lecture in the Mountain Theatre, a WPA era ampitheatre with seats carved of slabs of the California state rock, Serpentine.

This month, Dr. Isabel Hawkins from the Center for EUV Astrophysics spoke about the NASA Sun-Earth Connection forum. A very popular local speaker, Dr. Hawkins also serves as a Project Astro volunteer. I guess there were a couple hundred people at the lecture, who stayed to mooch some photons for an hour and a half afterwards. This is my kind of program - interesting lecture, and then an appreciative public who only stay for a short while, leaving the sky behind just for us star lovers when they leave.

The SFAA members were out in force. Mojo counted 30 telecopes up there, lots of SCTs in this club, and many reflectors ranging in aperture up to 16 inches wewe evident this night. Nick Ilotis was not there but his 12 inch teak tubed F7 reflector was there without him. Local observing legend Bill Cherrington was there too, with one of his smaller scopes, his 10 inch homemade dob, Jade - can you guess what color it is?? College of Marin Astronomy teacher (and my neighbor and observing buddy) Tinka Ross organizes the lectures and was nearby with her 12 inch LX200. Her Astronomy class was there too. You could tell which ones they were...clipboards...asking "What kind of telescope? What size? What magnification? NGC number? Then they sketched the objects on their class forms. My frequent observing buddy Robin Waleski was there, set up next door to my two scopes, Strider, a 12.5 inch truss tubed LITEBOX reflector, and Red Dwarf, a small 6 inch reflector made by Pierre Schwaar. This is my home base, and I like my local group clustered on the mountain I love.

We arrived a little late, after we got halfway there without my eyepiece case and went back for it. Mount Tamalpais has a pretty nice southern horizon so I took advantage and showed B86, Barnard's Inkspot to the public attendees of the monthly lecture and star party.

Barnard's Inkspot makes an interesting object for the public, because no one ever shows it. Millions of stars are clustered near the center of the Milky Way in the Saggitarius Star Cloud. Black snakey lines of dark clouds obscure some of the brilliant center of our galaxy. Right smack in the center of all this brilliant starry backdrop lies a unique object. Barnard 86, rimmed by the beautiful and symmetrical open cluster NGC 6520. "It appears as a distinct inky spot against the surrounding star-shimmer", says Robert Burnham, Jr. Easy to star-hop to, it lies just 2.7 degrees north of Gamma Sagittarii. The nucleus of the Milky Way is only 4 degrees west of B86. I said farewell to my little galactic buddy this night, and moved on to many other objects within our solar system, or outside our solar system. But first..

One of my visitors this evening was a seasoned and popular member of the SFAA. We have alot in common, the two of us. We both have 10 inch scopes. He also brings his mom and dad to star parties, just like I often do. Martin has been an SFAA member for about three years now. He is a 6th grader now, and I act like one sometimes. Well Martin said "for three months now, all everyone shows me is Jupiter and M13. I really like them both, but... can I see something else?" So I said, "sure, but you'll have to help me locate the objects on the star charts! His waning enthusiasm piqued, we dove right in to the Herald Bobroff Astro Atlas. Our first hunt was for the Saturn Nebula. First stop was the Planetary Nebula page of the atlas, and a hunt for NGC 7009. Then to Page B-6. Then to C-41. He loved the paper hunt. He relished the star hop and his own first nebulae catch.

Looking up past B-86 and the Teapot asterism of Sagittarius, and the steamy Milky Way, we turned our gaze a little to the east. We identified the smiley face of Capricornus. Martin said he could see braces in the smile! Just below our star-hopping guide star, theta Capricornii, are a few "teeth" eta, phi, chi and upsilon where Martin imagined "braces" in that dentally challenged smile. He was easily able to star hop with these guide stars. NGC 7009 is right next to nu Aquarii, a easy visual hop. A simple telrad find. And a glorius eyepiece discovery. I milked the moment for all it was worth, building up the excitement and explaining the object to Martin, and the antsy lineup behind my scope. As a diversion, and to soothe the savage beasties waiting not so patiently in the snaking line, I moved my little red scope to grab Saturn, the planet. The nice thing about a small scope is the ease of picking it up and moving it to capture a planet peeking out ever so demurely from the tree tops. Saturn and the Saturn Nebula. None of the other scopes could get it yet, so I had the best show in town for an hour or so.

The green flourescent glow of the nebula captivated the audience, and Martin was a happy camper. We compared the nebulae at different magnifications from 83X to 202X, with and without the ultrablock filter. Saturn glowing pearly and creamy colored in my other scope made a lovely companion. Like carney barkers, we were able to describe alot of beauty and science to the spellbound lineup of star seekers this night.

When I returned home Monday from my Astro weekend, Martin had e-mailed me a thank you note, and requested some website information about Saturn, the nebula and Saturn, the planet. I sent him off to visit Bill Arnett's Nine Planets, and Web Nebulae sites, and Doug Snyder's Planetary Nebulae Observers websites, plus John Gleason's astrophotography site of southern milky way wonders.