Observing at Pacheco

by Shekhar Borde

I subscribed to this list this last Friday and was suprised to see 30+ messages already waiting in my mail folder Monday morning :-)

A brief introduction is probably in order:

I live in Fremont and work in Cupertino. I have been dabbling in astronomy for a few years (mostly binocular) and finally bought an Orion 6" f/5 Newtonian last year . I have mostly been observing and learning on my own and finally realized that I would get a lot more out of this hobby by seeking out other people with similar interests.

I am glad to have found a local information resource and a group that shares a mutual interest in this great hobby.

I hope to meet and observe with you folks in the near future.

Best regards,

Shekhar

P.S: Having never been to Pacheco State Park and assuming that the drive was atleast 2+ hours, we opted to go to Henry Coe on Saturday night (it was our first time there too). Seeing and transparency were decent (M31 was visible to the naked eye and the Cassini division held fairly steady at 300x on a neighbor's 8" SCT -- don't know if that is the norm for Coe).

We also managed to squeeze in a few wide-field piggyback shots of Cygnus, Cass, the Pleaides, and Orion rising! The only disappointment was that the skyglow to the south-west pretty much washed out the milky way in Saggitarius/Scorpius.

Incidentally, there were about 20 cars in the parking lot but only 4 or 5 people had set up. Whomever all the other cars belonged to, never did show up (atleast not until 1:00 am, which is when we headed home).