Saturday night on Fremont Peak

by Jane Houston

Over in front of the Fremont Peak Observatory we had two boy scout troops, a college class, and many campers, and a nice amateur astronomer who travelled from Sausalito - and asked alot of questions about which size telescope he should buy next. A good sample was at his fingertips, so to speak. We had to do two slide shows of the summer sky as there were so many interested visitors, including one intrepid raccoon that ate my last piece of pizza.

The scope collection Saturday night included a 6, two 12.5 inchers and a 17.5 inch dobs. A couple more smaller scopes too, in addition to the 30 inch Challenger were happily collecting very ancient photons till 5:30 am. Once the fog settled in the valley at midddnight or so and a group of campers who returned to see Jupiter and Saturn left at 2:00 we got more serious. Limiting mag was 6.4 - we all saw the 6.4 mag star near Polaris. It was an incredible night on Fremont Peak.

Robert Hoyle and I found one challenging object in the Challenger at about 2:30 am Sunday morning. Definitely a high point for both of us.