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by Matt Tarlach
Sunday night, 10/3, I loaded my 12.5" dob in the truck and drove out to the Wragg Canyon site to meet some coworkers from Orion's SF store. As I drove west from my home near Sacramento, I noticed the sunset was the least spectacularly red that I'd seen in several weeks, and hoped that the smoke that has plagued our air had dissipated leaving us a clear sky to observe under.
Unfortunately, as darkness fell it became apparent that either there was a lot of water in the air, or maybe smoke, or both, because skies never got darker than charcoal gray. Zenithal limiting mag was about 5.5 or worse, nearly a mag less than my previous visit to he site back in early July. Seeing was also mediocre, I'd say 2 on a scale of 5 with a few steadier periods.
We still got some decent observing in, and I logged about half a dozen new objects. I figured the best course of action would be to stay close to the zenith, and pit my Ultrablock and O3 filters against the misty skies in a battle over planetary nedulae. I spent about half the evening in Cepheus, mostly working finder chart 11-6 in the NSOG. My logbook's at home, but I recall tracking down a couple of PK planetaries, one of them right in the little triangle of which Delta Cep forms the apex. These didn't reveal much detail, but NGC40 did show a neat annular shape with bright central star, and an unevenness to the outer shell - it'd be well worth a look under better conditions, or with a larger scope.
I picked up a few open clusters in the same area of Cepheus, of which NGC7510 was the most interesting, with a very flat, wedge-like shape. I also "discovered" that Delta Cep is a pretty double, after passing over it telescopically for all these years - serves me right for never looking at variable stars! At some point I swept over to check out Eta Cass, which I had split before without noting the recently ballyhooed pink color. Looking at it again: well, maybe, it looks more orange to me, perhaps the pink hue would show better on a darker night.
At around midnight I turned to Jupiter, but the seeing prevented any really good views. After some recent discussion about filters on the Shallow-Sky list, I tried a #25 Red in an attempt to cut through the seeing. It helped noticeably, but under the conditions could only improve the view from "poor" to "mediocre." Same on Saturn, even with the red filter in place Cassini's was only visible about 1/2 the time.
Looking ahead to an early workday, I packed up at 1 and drove down to SF. Not the most memorable session, but a few nice finds, and even a middling night out observing beats any night of "Must-see TV!"