by Jamie Dillon
A crisp young CHP officer was standing by his car with flares across Mt Hamilton Rd, and I got to hear those classic words literally, "You can't get there from here." A verbal epiphany. It might have been worth the extra hour and a half of driving.
This was Saturday night, the 5th. So much for meeting up with Steve Sergeant on Halley Hill. Got to Coe just after sundown, where a small group was set up. Wayne and Beth from Gilroy with Barry from Petaluma. Kim and her dog Kepler were mooching views, and Jose was using binocs, with Richard and his big truss scope (18"?) on the other end. Only person I knew at the outset was Matt Marcus.
There was another "can't get there" after moonset, chasing Pluto off of 20 Oph. Had the field nailed down, using the finderchart from S&T, but Ophiuchus was sinking into the murk and those smaller stars went fast. Lost the race, but now from not caring about Pluto a short time ago, I'm waiting till 3rd Q. Two extra factors: Nilesh found Pluto several weeks ago with his 6" Alfani, and this past month I read Clyde Tombaugh's marvelous book on Pluto and the chase he set himself to find Percival Lowell's Planet X.
Did have lots of fun thru Sagittarius, finding globulars amid the bright celebrities. NGC 6642 is NW of M22, looked distant and redder (older?) than its neighbor. Around the Lagoon to the SE I found 6544 then 6553, both with unresolved stars at 57x. 6553 was bigger with some extensions out from its core. This was using an 11" Celestron f/4.5 Dobs, with a 22 Panoptic, 16mm UO Koenig, 6mm Radian and a Televue 2x Barlow. Used a Lumicon OIII to gaze at the Lagoon, Swan and Eagle. M17 (Swan, Omega, Checkmark, Roman Nose) was breathtaking with its big sweep. It's having a good summer.
Went back and forth from binocs to scope, getting the sweep of Sagittarius, moving in to study the Star Cloud for the nth time, gazing at M18 and M25, landmark big OC's.
Barry hadn't seen the outer planets ever, so we had fun looking at Uranus and Neptune, also helping Wayne find them in his 1100. The Perseids were going thru the night, with the occasional bright trail. At one moment we were all by chance looking down when the ground lit up. My charts were lit up with two flashes. We looked up and there was a trail across about 3 deg of sky, lasting at least 10 seconds.
(This was drafted this afternoon, and since then I've read Matt's report. I'm being conservative at the size of that trail, and he looked up before I did.)
Not long after midnight Matt and I were the only ones left and we had a big time swapping views and comparing notes. 891 was back, so was the arm between delta and epsilon Cas, a serious favorite stretch of sky. Blinked the Blinking Planetary, NGC 7662, my first time. Matt was on it, which reminded me of Nilesh's excitement. It was way cool, played with esp at 57x. Dig those Purkinjis!
Jupiter and Saturn were between the Pleiades and Hyades, captivating. The Great Red Spot is back, darker and redder. And Saturn had a dark brown band just off the equator that wasn't there last year. Also had 3 lighter brown bands. Still can see the shadow of the planet on the rings.
M33 was a whole lot easier to find than it was a year and a half ago. I mention it here because Mr Marcus pointed out a bright HII region at the end of an arm, by a bright foreground star. First time I've seen an extragalactic HII in Felix.
Eventually I was really finally going to pack up, headed for the can, looked over my shoulder, said, "Look, Matt, there's Orion over the trees." He went, "Now we've done it." M42 is in fact still there in its incomparable glory.
This meant two hours sleep, night before last. It was worth it.