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by Jamie Dillon
Having had a committment last Friday night, and the past three nights here in Salinas having shown a spectacular overcast, I'm harking back to last Friday week, the 16th, when Felix Dobs took his first trip to a dark sky place. First time I went up without my kid, and got home at predawn.
This was my second trip with a telescope up the Peak, and as it developed a whole new look at the spring sky. For perspective, I went from binocs to binocs with tripod last August, then started with telescopes with the new year. As this spring has rolled in, I realize how much stargazing I'd done winter and summer, even fall, to the neglect of the spring sky.
There's an obvious subtext to this post, it being directed to other rank beginners. You read S & T and sure enough TAC, and here are these dudes sighting quasars and getting a CCD image of a galaxy at redshift ca 1.0, 8 billion l.y.'s out, mag 24.1, in a suburban backyard, for crying out loud.
In this active night I found three new objects: M13, Cor Caroli, and M51, the latter with a fair amount of help. Parsing out the time spent, I then actually spent a good hour gazing at the Hercules Cluster, then at least 30 minutes studying M51, after an hour finding it.
A good deal of time that night was alloted to learning the pattern of constellations in that corridor from between Leo and Ursa Major, moving east. I'd known that Corona Borealis and Coma Berenices were that lovely scatter of stars and the backward C, but not which was which. Hercules I'd sighted in the summer, along the line of Deneb and Vega, but not from the other direction. Ophiuchus I still have to meet in person. Canes Venatici is becoming more intimate.
The human company was great. Still novel, given that before January any stargazing after 10 pm had always been solo. Jim Bartolini, Mark Wagner, Rod Norden, Rich Neuschaefer and Jeff Blanchard made a compact and cordial group by the Observatory. Having seen M81 and M82 thru the Blue 22 earlier, after 2 am or so the late night gang showed off M4, Albireo, the Ring and Dumbbell planetaries, and the Lagoon and Trifid emission nebulae.
Mars was all over the place, esp thru Norden's hightone refractor with binocular eyepieces. Just amazing, crisp details, including the dark of the dunes surrounding the North Pole, Vastitas Borealis.
The story with M51 was that I'd been hunting for that object from the backyard under less than ideal conditions, and I had the wrong angle off of Alkaid and 24 UMa. When I finally asked for help, Mark Wagner gave me a Telrad lesson, then was cool enough to find the general field and let me get M51 into the eyepiece myself. Saw the bridge clearly, spiral, core, 3-4 dust lanes. Just lovely.
Oh, and I saw the Beehive naked eye for the very first time. Swarmed right into the binocs. M81 and M82 were on Felix's list, but every time I headed over there that part of the sky was clouded over, and the guide stars were obscured. But the double Cor Caroli, alpha CVn, was knockdown gorgeous, orange and blue.
May other rookies take heart!