We arrived at Plettstone pretty late on Friday night so I decided not to open up the observatory. Instead, I pulled out the lounge chair and did astronomy the old fashioned way... with my naked eyes. The air seemed incredibly clear and the moon had a high contrast against the blackness of the sky. I thought that had I been there earlier, the seeing and transparency would have been outstanding. I was hoping that Saturday would be good based on the conditions I was enjoying.

Saturday morning, Paul had an occasion to meet some of our neighbors for the first time. (It's kind of a funny story but that is left best to friends). I asked him to invite them over for some viewing later in the evening. They accepted.

Just after sundown, I rolled off the top of the observatory to get things to cool down. Since this was a "moon" night, I had planned to do a little observing for the first part of the evening and then do some maintenance and calibration after the moon came up. I've had a RA drift problem that I have never been able to resolve.

The two primary instruments for the evening were a C11 SCT and Celestron 80mm refractor mounted on a Losmandy G11 equaorial head. I had just obtained the used refractor on Thursday to use as a guiding scope. I have been using a 100mm refractor for a guide scope and the 80mm weighs less. I thought that this may help alleviate the RA drift problem. The last time I visited the observatory, I had spent a great deal of time to accurately collimate the C11 using a CCD camera and a triple hole mask. I was looking forward to see the results.

Just as the stars came out, our neighbors Stan and Sue arrived in their pickup truck. I took a quick peek at Jupiter. The warm currents in the sky had not settled and the planet's disk was ablaze with fire. This was not the image to introduce new people to the sky. Instead we focused on bright favorites. We started out with the great Hercules globular cluster (M13). Sue was amazed at the sight and sqeeled with delight at seeing something so extraordinary. I still have never seen a photograph that does these bright globular clusters justice.

For the next hour or so, we shared views of the bright nebulae, the ring in Lyra, the swan and lagoon in Sagitarius, and the dumbell. Stan mentioined that he had a telescope and had never been able to get it to work so he had never seen anything. After a brief period of questions and answers, I deduced he had an equatorial mount and explained to him how to do a simple polar allignment. I also informed him that all of the things we saw could be seen in his scope quite easily.

Since my observing passion is galaxies, we spent some time talking about them and looking at a couple of them. We looked at Andromeda and its companinons. I even showed them ngc7331. While I was moving the scope, I took a quick peak at Stephan's Quintet. Lovely. Easy target. Was this sky great or what?

I love showing people the sky for the first time. Especially folks who are really interested. We had a chance to get to know each other some. Paul and Stan's jokes and laughter filled the valley.

Just as Saturn raised its head over the treeline in the east, I pointed the scopes back towards Jupiter. WOW! A view reminiscent of what I've seen through a friends 7" AP refractor under great conditions at the peak. The seeing and transparency were excellent. As an added bonus, the "great red spot" was plainly visible. It was yelling at us... it was that clear. Some beautiful blue festoons gracefully transgressed into the equatorial band. This was a sight for the books. I promised myself to come back after my visitors left.

Saturn had easily cleared the tree line and I moved the scopes for a peak. My new friends hand another knock your socks off view of a planet. Saturn was still in the lower atmosphere but the rings were clearly cut into several divisions and the equatorial bands were undeniable. We oohed and ahed for several minutes.

We had spent two and half hours looking at fewer than 15 objects. It's nice to be able to share these sights and talk about them. I love to describe them to visitors and attempt to explain how they come to be. Soon our guests left, and I was alone with the dark night.

I swung back to Jupiter and watched as the spot started to move behind the planet. Then I got back to work. The moon was coming up and I wanted to get a good focus with my CCD for next week's marathon run. I spent several minutes getting the beastie focused and shot a few tricolor images. One of these days, I'm gong to figure out how to get those to look good (of the moon).

I had planned to spend some time with drift allignment but the permanent installation just doesn't change that much. After running some tests for a half hour or so, I decided to see what the CCD could do on something close to the moon. Orion's great nebulae were up and were only 30 to 40 degrees away from the 3rd quarter moon.

I focused the instruments on the trapezium. My objective here was not to get a shot of M42 (the large nebula in Orion). I wanted to see what was in the trapezium region. Every shot I have ever seen of M42 is completely washed out. After some brief tests with exposures, I decided a 15 second exposure through filters would keep those bright stars in check. I ran a total of 60 exposures, 20 each through red, green, and blue filters. The process took hours it seems. I looked at the clock... 4AM. I couldn't believe it.

I had to combine the images before I went to bed however... I wanted to see what I had. The results were not stunning but nevertheless, impressive.

The SX H5116 has a very low dark current and the sumation of so many exposures did not seem to add any low level noise. In addition, I had never seen this area of the sky photographed. The clouds of gas reflect an enormous amount of blue light. I had very little red and practically no green in the nebula. I am very excited to get back home and do some processing on these images.

At 5:00 AM, I shut down the computers and other equipment, buttoned up the observatory, and went to bed. I couldn't go to sleep right away. The excitement of a great observing/CCD session kept me awake for some time.

Every once in a while, you get an extraordinary night.