Plutocrats at Fremont Peak

by Jane Houston

Technical data

Date	Saturday, July 3rd/4th, 1999
Location	Fremont Peak State Park Observatory
Startools	30 inch "Challenger" and 6 inch "Red Dwarf" reflectors at 50xx to 200XX

The local Plutocrats met for a short observing night in somewhat windy conditions up at the Observatory at Fremont Peak State Park in Central California. Giving each other the secret Pluto handshake, we smugly knew we were members of a small but proud group: those who have seen, found, and verified Pluto - and enjoyed it! The fog stayed nestled in the valley below, obscuring the light dome from Soledad State Prison in the distance. We concentrated on the planets again, with a few peeks at some other objects, and had some nice conversation with a star-friendly gathering. A few campers came by and took a look through our scopes, too.

Mercury was still nice and high. Mars and Venus were showieces, especially Mars in the 30 inchers stopped down to 10 inches. Moments of clear and crisp views for the patient observers revealed some stunning views and detail. The "horns" of Venus were beautiful!

While waiting for a good view of Ophiuchus thru the 30 incher, I placed my Rainbow Optics Star Spectroscope on my little F5 6 incher attached to a 15 MM Ultrascopic eyepiece. This gave a nice spectum five time longer then the heigth. Perfect! We looked at the spectrum of Antares - dark molecuclar bands. We compared the spectra of of bright summer stars Arcturus, and then over to the bright white Vega, Deneb and Altair. We tried to see the double spectra of Albireo, but neither were very bright.

Then we aimed the big Challenger scope at Zeta Ophiuchi and hopped to Pluto. We each took looks and verified our 9th planet. Then we pumped up the power. There were more stars - more Pluto candidates with higher resolution, but we each were pretty sure we found our 9th planet again. A fellow Plutocrat with a large telescope outside the observatory (and who was also wearing his deep-sky weasel hat this night) asked to let us know of the image of Pluto was oval or elongated. He'd come take a look if and when we had Charon in the view! Plutocrats are like that sometimes!

We had a list of all bright satellites and saw quite a few Iridium satellites ruin our dark adaption, and we also saw the International Space Station. It was fun to anticipate, look in the right place and see this space debris. Well, some of it is debris, anyway. One persons trash is anothers treasure, I thought to myself.

A walk around the telescope fields yielded one solitary 12 inch LX200 churning away in another lot. We told the owner we had Pluto in the big scope, and would do Neptune and Uranus next. He said "we wish we could see Neptune or Uranus, but they are not visible according to the telescope software this early in the evening." I pointed to the clearly visible Capricornus and said, well my software will show you where they are. I pointed my finger at the smily face of Capricornus. Soon the owner was punching in "URANUS" into his go-to machine, and the scope creaked into place. He looked and said "it is one of these stars", and he was pretty sure which was the planet. I described the surrounding stars and the planet, which formed a cross or kite. It looked nice and spherical, the color unmistakable. We bid the lone observers in the big parking lot adieu, and invited them to stop by the next night when we'll be running the big scope again. Back across the nice path to the observatory, we observed the night-time sights and sounds on planet earth. Back to our own telescopes.

On we went with our planet spotting project, hurridly now as the moon was beginning to brilliantly poke up thru the fog. We quickly found Neptune and Uranus, and packed up and closed up the observatory for another night. Tomorrow, we'll see the movement of our favorite little planet against the circle of dim stars that made its cradle. It takes about 20 minutes to drive down the 11 mile windy road from Fremont Peak State Park to the mission town of San Juan Bautista. It took Mojo and I almost that long to sing the entire "Planet X" Pluto song, by Christine Lavin. I'll bet our observing pals were thankful we waited and sang in the car!

On the way home, we spotted Jupiter, and at 3:30 AM sleepily got out of bed to see our ninth planet in 7 hours, Saturn, in a brilliant ecliptic arc formed by Jupiter and the moon. Ahhhh!!

Jane Houston, proud Plutocrat