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I don't normally take Gus, my 10" DOB with me to work at the Lick Crocker Dome, but the weather was so good, I loaded the scope in the car Sunday afternoon.
Arriving on site, I set up in the driveway next to the to the twin Astrograph. I decided to use the office in the Astrograph for my charts; no one would mind as the Astrograph with its magnificent twin 20" scopes hasn't been used for years. In the Astrograph dome is an old tube type Hallicrafters SX-62 receiver. So I turned it on, let it warm up, and tuned in a classical station. I left the hallway doors open so I could hear my Beethoven and Bach echo around the inside of the 60 foot dome then bounce outside by Gus. The dome gave the music an incredible big symphony hall sound.
So what could be better than that: Great skies above Lick, great music, good weather, the rumbling of the Shane 120 dome moving, and a great little 10" DOB. After hiking down and up the hills to Vulcan and getting things going over there (remember I was up there to work), I began my observing session. To get the usual technicalities out of the way, the temperature was 70F and humidity was a fairly dry 27%. Seems as a professional observer, those numbers tell me a lot on how things are going to be. Anyway, the sky was perfectly transparent and rock steady.
Gus and I began our session with a look at the Lagoon Nebula and it was spectacular as can be. Next, I wanted to take a look in the general area of Perseus as that's where Vulcan is currently targeted. So I swung Gus over there. Suddenly, I realized that M31 was naked eye so Gus ended up on that. In my low power eyepiece, I got a beautiful view of all three wonders - M31, M110 and M32. Moving up to higher power,104X, showed nice details in all three.
Moving on to Cassiopeia, I found NGC 7789, a faint cluster but none the less, a beautiful sight. Then to object 129 in Cassiopeia, another cluster. Slid over to Andromeda again and took a nice look at M33. Its big and diffuse but again very nice.
On to one of my favorites that I hadn't seen in years, the Double Cluster in Perseus. The upper cluster, 869H has one of the most interesting star shapes - the "Catspaw" of five stars, all about magnitude 8. They look like jewels hanging on a jet black background. The Double Cluster is appearing in the Vulcan field too but then visual optics add depth, a hint of color, and clarity that even a $70,000 CCD can't do.
Finally, I took a look at ST2, 1 Perseus, then M103 in Cassiopeia and then the Pleadies. I ended the session with some stunning views of Saturn and Jupiter. I could make out 6-8 bands on Jupiter but couldn't make out Cassini's division on Saturn.
My nightly visit over to the Shane 120 telescope was pretty interesting too. There were two visiting astronomers form Oxford England there doing red shift measurements on radio stars. So it was a challenge for them to locate the stars visually. While I was there, it took almost 20 minutes to find one of them. The big boys have just as much trouble as us finding things too. I'd taken a bag of good cookies with me to share, so we were eating cookies and sipping hot tea between scope moves. I think it made things a little better for them.
Even though I'm extremely tired tonight, only having 6 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours, I feel all warm and fuzzy thinking back to the spectacular weekend at Lick. Hope you enjoy reading this.....until next time.....