Five of us went up to Coe last night (4/23/00)
Bruce Jensen with his 18 inch Starmaster, Richard Ozer with his 10 inch homemade Dob, Jamie Dillon with Felix (11 inch Dob), Sandra Macika with a 14.5 inch Starmaster, and me with a 7 inch Starmaster Oak Classic.
Wind was pretty gusty in later afternoon, and I actually packed a kite in the car expecting the worst in the Coe parking lot. Fortunately, winds quieted down nicely after sunset. Fog never shut down the valley lights, but clear skies, temperatures in the 40s, little dew, and quite steady seeing at times made very enjoyable observing conditions.
I spent the evening in the Virgo section of the Hershel 400 list, a dense region filled with lots of galaxies but few bright stars. The HB Astroatlas was an excellent guide for the night. The D charts (roughly equivalent to Millenium Star Atlas detail) have so many stars and galaxies plotted that Virgo is actually easier to tour than the sky regions covered only by C level charts (roughly equivalent to Sky Atlas 2000 level detail). Cruising galaxies was a snap, with lots of volunteer galaxies picked up on the way to H400 targets.
The best new finds were:
A beautiful elongated edge-on galaxy, 4216. This made a large gash across half the eyepiece field at 120 x, and showed a bright nucleus superimposed on the pencil like arms on either side.
A contrasting galaxy pair, 4762 and 4754. 4762 was a sharp small edge-on floating above the softer more spherical 4754. Both galaxies were laid out in a pretty group of stars that resembled a face on view of a Komodo dragon rearing his head above wide set front lizard legs. It was the combination of stars and galaxies that made this a memorable view, with the Komodo dragon probably coming courtesy of just having read Douglas Adams's Last Chance to See with my children.
In addition to logging 30 new and 56 total objects through my own scope over four hours or so, I also enjoyed views of the Ghost of Jupiter through Richards scope, some pretty doubles through Jamie's Dob, and M51, 4565 and M5, and a couple of other beautiful objects through Bruce and Sandra's Starmasters. The aperture and seeing conditions made the M51 views some of the best I have seen.
An orange 3rd quarter moon peaked over the eastern horizon about 12:45, rising through dark shelves of thin horizon clouds. It made a gorgeous view through 15x45 binoculars, and marked the end of an excellent night of observing