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by Jamie Dillon
You wouldn't like it. When the Forest Service says 'unimproved road' they mean it. 4-wheel isn't necessary but was comforting. One stretch was along a precipice, cliff on the other side, narrow roadbed. Somebody come along and you would study the power of prayer quickly (note the deliberate use of the subjunctive - it didn't happen). Wilderness camping, bring your own, dig a hole. Bugs, little flies I'd never seen before, don't bite but are fascinated with ears.
But the horizons at >4000 feet, on a ridge at the S end of the Big Sur. After sunset, on one end was the whole tail of Scorpius, spin around north and there's all of Ursa Major. At the SW lot, Pegasus was up by 11, here it was there after sunset.
Late at night, after 3, something changed and you could hear the surf, way down the west side of the ridge. Vertiginous in more ways than one.
Jeff Blanchard was touring Aquila and Scutum, found 5 planetaries new to him, bagged 18 new objects in all. You'll hafta ask him for details. My list was mainly around Ophiuchus, clusters and binaries. One can see the steep learning curve between 8 months at the eyepiece and over 3 years.
This was with Felix, the 11" Celestron Dobs f/4.5, with a 26mm SMA, two Plossls, 17 and 7.5, and a Televue 2x Barlow.
I wanted to see the False Comet around zeta Sco. The star itself showed as an optical triple, with the primary all bright and orange. NGC 6231 was an array of colors (OC), and there were Col 316 and Trumpler 26 lined up. Sue French had it right in the July S&T. Spent some time staring at M80, thinking about blue stragglers.
On to Ophiuchus, where M19 was more difficult than I'd guessed. A symmetrical, compact globular. M62 is just south of M9 but just didn't reveal itself. Jeff had helped me with M9 after I'd taken 7 passes at the field, but neither of us made easy work of M62.
In learning the way around Sagittarius, I'd missed M23, so it was next. Turns out I'd mistakenly been looking for a globular, and that importunate open cluster that kept showing up in the eyepiece was the target. Gorgeous, too. Rows of bright concentric arcs. The Ballpark Cluster. On the way I 'discovered' NGC 6553, SE of the Lagoon, lopsided with 3 bright stars at the center.
On to binaries. Gamma Del Jeff recommended, sure enough a pretty yellow-white equal double. 70 Oph has a blue-white primary, with the secondary yellowish. Theta Ser was an intense pair, equal (4.5 and 5.4), blue-white. Dickinson in the Mag 6 atlas describes this one as "a noble offering for the small telescope owner."
Jeff Blanchard is one of those guys who can find Abell clusters and 12th mag planetaries, but who'll stop and ooh and aah and spend 5 minutes at the eyepiece on a Messier open cluster or an easy binary.
After cookies and coffee-milk, no way to wait any longer to stare at Saturn. The wind had picked up, and for a while it was sitting waiting for moments of good seeing. We could both see pale bands, and as you know the rings are at some alluring angle. Titan and 3 other moons were visible. Jupiter had some fine moments later, with at least 7 bands visible in each hemisphere, festoons galore on the main bands. I saw my first Galilean transit. We had seen a moon approach Jupiter's disk, didn't know if it was heading behind or in front. Sure enough, Jeff in his 12.5" caught the bright moon en route. It was reinforcing a) to know by the bright aspect in transit that it should be Europa, and b) to have the S&T chart there to confirm that it was in fact Europa exiting at 3am.
On to Cassiopeia. This was towards 2 am, with that part of the Milky Way high in the north. Scanned from delta to epsilon Cas for a whole pile of open clusters, focusing on M103 (wide open, big variation of stars) and NGC 663 (close and complex). M52, off beta Cas, was naked-eye (at 7 vis mag, not a bad sky!). Jeff called it showpiecy, and we both spent long minutes gazing at this real pretty cluster. Bright jewels.
By this time it was well after 2, second night in a row out, and the end of the program was 'big, bright and easy.' I know I'd said I was going after Stephan's Quintet, but with the wind the seeing kept shifting, and my intuition matched my mate's judgment. Later - Rome wasn't built in a day. Felix came along in my life after I'd scoped out the Auriga clusters in ole Number 31 the SJAA 8" f/8. Felix was impressed. M38 was showing tendrils of stars trailing down. M36 showed as modest but forthright (hey, it was late). M37 was worth long minutes. By now the wind had died down, and the Double Cluster was flat breathtaking.
As was M42. Without a filter, there were fine details in the inner nebula and the arms sweeping off to the east of the Trapezium. Saw 5 stars in the Trapezium.
Went back and forth from M42 to the Double Cluster, then for dessert to the waning crescent Moon just coming up. Found a dark crater paired with a bright one, with a sloping hill just down in the field. Groucho glasses! In my new treasure of a Rukl, they turn out to be Grimaldi and Riccioli (chart 39).
Jeff was asleep, the surf was crashing far below, crickets were singing, some hen was squawking off in the trees at long intervals. What a place. Lying in the bag staring up, I was wondering what those two long arms of stars were, off to the north of Cassiopeia and down from Cepheus. They were the western arms of Ursa Major, having dipped down and up again. What a night.