What a relief.

Having been photon deficient for nearly 6 weeks I was determined to seek them out, and so with disdain of the thin high clouds that stretched as far as I could see, I packed my gear in the car and headed South to one of my local observing sites

An hour an forty-five minutes and one hundred and nine miles later, I entered the South West parking lot at Freemont Peak, it was 3:45 PM, I was alone.

The sky was almost completely covered with the exact same clouds formations I tried to escape when leaving San Francisco! "I’ve just got Buzzard’s luck," I thought to myself. "Can’t kill noth’in, and wont noth’in die."

Well I had come all this way to set up my telescope, so damn it, that’s just what I did. I got the scope set up unloaded my gear set up my table and chair and grabbed my observing material to go over the list of Herschel objects I wanted to view, ( that is if the sky would ever clear ) and then, more "Buzzard’s luck," I left my Herschel list at home! I looked toward the skies as I screamed at myself and thought, " Hell I wouldn’t be able to see any Herschel object through this muck anyway.

I busied myself by setting up my camp stove and making a pot of coffee, I pop the top on a Heinekens, set back and watched an airplane leave a con trail 20 miles long in the sky above me. As I sat there waiting for some golf ball sized hail to beat me about the head and shoulders, Mark Taylor drove up and parked next to me. "Great " I thought. " At least I wont be the only "Fool on the Hill."

We talked and complained about the not so friendly skies, but he was as determined as I to do some observing this night. So while he set up his equipment I finished making my coffee. A little bit later Mark and I welcomed Dave North and Akkana Peck along with their arrival it looked as though the clouds were starting to thin out, in fact the skies to the southeast were really clearing and the wind was blowing from that direction. And as Darkness fell the four of us were joined by a new comer to the Peak and the Bay Area for that matter, John is his name and he had with him an 8" SCT, I think he just moved up here from the LA. area.

The skies had cleared a great deal by 6:30 and Jupiter, shinning brightly, beckoned, I trained the 8" Dobs at the Planet and was pleased to see the seeing was fairly good and was getting better very fast, the transparency however sucked, so I thought for tonight at least I would be a Planetary Observer. Got to get those photons anyway you can!

The detail seen on Jupiter was very nice, 7 bands were easily seen, above the northern equatorial zone there were 2 very thin very dark bands. One went across the entire disk of the Planet the other about 2/3 across. They were so dark, thin and straight, it looked as though someone had used a magic maker to draw them. This however was not the most interesting phenomenon seen on might Jove. In the middle of the Southern equatorial zone there lay a string of white ovals that stretched all the way across! It looked all the world like a string of large pearls had been hung on the Planet, as though it was dressing up for Christmas.

Dave had set up his 5" Tak and was the first to notice the white ovals, the views we were getting were very pleasing, but nothing like what we would see a little later on.

Next up was Saturn. This object never fails to impress, and tonight was no different. By the time I moved onto Saturn the seeing had really improved, Cassini’s division, the Crepe Ring were very prominent and in my scope and in Dave’s Tak, Encke’s division stood out very well and was pleasure to see.

We all had been so engrossed in watching the Planets we had not noticed that the sky all around us had cleared! Seeing was good, but the transparency was still pretty bad, I could only count 5 of the 7 Sisters in the Pleiades.

I was in heaven, bathed in ancient Photons from all directions, I could feel the strength returning to my poor photon depleted body, I was saved! HALLELUJAH!!!!!

At that moment some high clouds moved in and turned the bright stars in the Pleiades into a faint nebula. "Oh no." I said. "This can’t be happening , not now!" And no sooner had I said that, the sky started to become more and more transparent. 10 minutes later I could see all the Seven Sisters, the Double Cluster in Perseus was naked eye as was Andromeda. Deep Sky here I come!

It was 8:30 PM the sky was clear, seeing was very good and transparency was good, I took a deep breath and dived into Deep Space.

M81 and 82 were very bright, 82 showed 3 dust lanes that were easily seen. The Winter Milky Way was almost over head, and since I had forgotten my Herschel list, this seemed as good a place to start my Fuzzy hunt as any. After viewing M38, 36 and 37 I got a good long look at M35. This was the first Deep Sky object I had ever seen, I spotted it last year by accident right after I built my 8" Dobs from my S.F. home. I am not really drawn to open clusters that much, but there are a few that I really like, M35 is one of these.

The California Nebula was nice in Akkana’s Short Tube 80, then I found the Rosette and the Cone Nebula in my scope. After splitting Lambda Orionis , Rigel and Castor, I moved on to IC 434, and the Horsehead was just visible in my scope, I was in shock! M42, 43 was really nice, lots of structure in that mass of gas and dust. M31, 32 and 101 were nice and bright, I was able to get all three in 32mm EP and M33 showed two dust lanes. NGC 428, 470,474, 864 and 1087 are 11-12 Mag. galaxies. I had hints of seeing two 13th Mag. galaxies, but could not confirm it.

By 11:00 PM the skies above us were wonderful! Mark Taylor said he could see 9 or 10 stars in the Pleiades, I could only manage 7, but I was able to see some nebulosity the seeing and transparency were now excellant. So good was it that we all started looking again at the Planets but this time under high power. Mark was the one that started it. He had Saturn in his scope at about 500 power! And the image held up well!

I wanted to play with power as well, so I popped in my 7.5mm EP with barlow for 387x the view I had was outstanding, you could drive a truck through Cassini’s division and Encke’s division was plane as day! But I wanted to see it even bigger, so I stacked two barlows with the 7.5mm EP which would crank up the power to somewhere around 640x and the image held up, it was a little softer, but all the prominent features were still viewable! And on Jupiter at this power, all of the features mentioned above stood out in bold relief. The only problem was keeping the object in view with the Dobsoian Scope. Boy what a night!

We were all treated to the beginning of the Geminids meteor shower. Many bright streamers were seen crossing the sky, Mark saw one that he described as being brighter than Sirius!

12:30 AM we start to break down our stuff while watching those hot shooters race across the sky, by 1:00 AM we were all packed and ready to head down the mountain. I had planed to spend the night there, as I normally do, but the forecast for Sunday was for rain and I didn’t want to take a chance and wake up with a case of pneumonia, so back to San Francisco I went, happy as a sissy in a CC camp!