Chris Bailey and I entertained a couple of friends at Del Valle Regional Park on Wednesday night, the first of an apparent string of good nights where high pressure finally set in for clear skies. The sky was pretty transparent, although the presence of substantial and persistent jet contrails in the upper troposphere revealed the presence of some high level moisture and instability. That, plus the almost constant easterly breezes at the surface resulted in slightly less-than-perfect sky conditions and generally horrible seeing, although a few moments were better than others. I found for the most part that stars were swimming already at about 92x, even after mirror cool-down. In hunting for a few small planetary nebulae, I found high power identification somewhat difficult, although not impossible, with stars being quite bloated at 290 diameters.

Nonetheless, a number of nice nebulae were found during the evening. The first, IC 2003, is a mag. 12.6 planetary nebula of 7 arcseconds diameter, a bit small but fairly bright for that, yielding a nice pale bluish-gray color at 290x. It was obviously nonstellar at this power despite the conditions. On a better night, more magnification might have revealed some structure, but on this night higher power would have been a total waste.

NGC 1499, the California Nebula in Perseus, was faintly visible as a slight brightening against the background using an Ultrablock filter. Not as well-defined as I had seen it in Ray Gralak's scope one evening at Fremont Peak using an H-beta filter, it was still possible to trace its outline against the darker background. In a similar vein was IC 2087, another large nebulous object in the same part of the sky, with characteristics much like those of the California Nebula - broad, faint, poorly defined against the background, and with the added problem that its edge fades off gradually, rather than abruptly as with the California. I would rate this object as a little tougher to outline, although the central portion is a bit higher contrast that the California; it would be interesting to see what an H-Beta filter would do for it.

Many bright and familiar objects were simply not at their best, except in fleeting moments. M33 in Triangulum showed its spiral arms and nebulous regions, but with frequent blurring of the edges. M1 (Crab Nebula) in Taurus was an amorphous blob this evening, with nothing like the edge detail visible in a dark stable atmosphere.

IC 443 in Gemini was faintly visible using the O-III filter, invisible without it. Here was a fine example of how critical a sky unsullied by excess light can be - at Fremont Peak in October, a nice dark night revealed this object fairly easily as a well-defined arc of light even with a broadband filter, and faintly with no filter in the 18" scope. Here it was barely discernible. The same applies for NGC 2174 and 2175, a fairly bright nebula-star cluster association in Orion; at Fremont Peak this object stood forth brightly and distinctly, with much detail. Here, it was undistinguished and amorphous even with an O-III filter. While I would not discourage folks to observe under moderately bright-sky conditions, I strongly recommend working for reduction of light pollution and light trespass, because it really does make a universe of difference.

The remainder of the night yielded two more new objects for me - The first was NGC 2339, a fairly bright, large and oval galaxy in Gemini, all the more interesting as it shines pretty distinctly through the outer edge of the Milky May. If it were located elsewhere, at coordinates outside of the glow of our galaxy's arms, it might be a real showpiece, maybe even one of those that Messier would have listed as a comet-wannabe. As it is, it is simply a nice bright galaxy in a location where galaxies are a bit scarce. The other object is another small planetary nebula, Jonkheera 900, a mag. 11.7 spot with diameter of 7 arcseconds. This nebula, too, was fairly bright, but a bit hard to pick out of the relatively rich starfield in which it resides, especially with the stars being so swelled at high power. Nonetheless, using an 7mm Nagler and an O-III filter to blink the view made the little bluish puff stand out distinctly compared to the surrounding stars of similar magnitude. In appearance, it seemed almost a smaller dimmer relative of the Blue Snowball Nebula, NGC 7662 in Andromeda. When I had the 8" telescope, I had little luck with blinking; it seemed that either the field was too dim or too narrow for the process to work well. However, at the time I was also using eyepieces with narrower fields (primarily plossls) and perhaps the combination of widefield oculars and the larger light gathering capacity of the 18" enhance the process to the point of ease.

After a few views of the Orion and Rosette Nebulae about 9:30 PM, we noticed a few cirrus clouds working their way over, and also that the wind had begun to chill us a bit; at that we packed it in and headed home for a good night's sleep and dreams of greater astronomical conquests on the weekend to come.