| Date | September 29 & 30, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Location | Lake San Antonio County Park, Monterey County |
I attended the first and trial California Unified Star Party, CalStar, along with close to 100 other observers and astro-imagers. I drove down late on Friday night, September 29, after a tiring week of business travel. I arrived at the site of the event around 11:00 PM.
Finding a very dark site, I didn't want to disturb anyone with the light it would take to unpack and set up my own equipment. So I parked at the far perimeter of the field and walked in to mooch views of the other participants for the evening.
Although I didn't keep any notes on what I saw through other people's telescopes that night, I did greatly appreciate a lot of good views offered by others. I quickly gained an appreciation for how very dark this site is.
Shortly after 2:00 AM I went to sleep in my car, and was awakened by the bright, pre-dawn morning light. I immediately scrambled to move my car into the camping area, and set up my tent up in the best shade available. Unfortunately, my estimates of the sun's declination was off, and my tent was in the blazing sun all morning.
I spent the day Saturday trying to stay out of the sun, and studying my newly acquired copies of the volumes of Burnham's Celestial Handbook, thinking about the objects I wanted to track down that night. Though I have never done a "formal" Messier survey, I'm in the process now of re-visiting them all with Zefram, my JMI NGT-12.5. My emphasis is on objects that were much more difficult to see, or to find, in my Orion Short-tube 80. Using Burnham's, and Wil Tiron's Cambridge Star Atlas, I identified some other interesting objects that would be in the vicinity of my targeted Messiers.
At sunset, after some careful but not lengthy polar alignment of both of my 'scopes, I started in on my program (with a few unplanned detours):
This object, which I never found in to short-tube, jumped out at me in the NGT. It's clearly oval and fuzzy compared to surrounding stars at 159X.
An enourmous 45-degree tilted spiral galaxy in Pegasus. This thing looked a lot brighter in Zephram than Starry Night's indication of mag 10.5 would imply. I could make out a number of bright and dark areas, including one probable dust lane in the disk.
Armed with Jay Freeman's S&T article, I pumped up the courage to track this one down in Pegasus. Now, did I see it or didn't I? I definitely identified two bright patches, again at 159X, which I'm figuring are NGC7318 and 7320. On further study I thought I could separate NGC7319 from the group, but I don't think I can say I identified 7317 in the field.
A nice little mag. 11 face-on spiral in Pegasus. One could almost mistake this one for a planetary nebula resembling the Blue Snowball.
A good sized open cluster in Cygnus. I see it as a big bullfrog poised to jump.
This magnificent spiral galaxy in Andromeda, viewed almost edge-on, is listed in Burnham's as being almost twice the diameter of the Milky Way. I saw the line of it's great dust lane cutting through the middle.
This was a great serendipitous discovery. Look 2 degrees south of the pointy end of Triangulum. You'll find this fascinating "rabbit ears" pair of edge-on spiral galaxies. After I saw them in Zephram, I went and looked to them some more in John's 25-inch Obsession. Way kewl!
An open cluster in Puppis. I think someone showed this to me a few years ago, but I'd never found it on my own before.
Another large open cluster in Puppis. I saw modest nebulosity around the brightest stars.
A close neighbor to M47, more and dimmer stars than M47.
This open cluster in Monoceros appears to me to have a wider range of star sizes (brightnesses) than many open clusters.
I might be tempted to call this open cluster in Hydra the "little butterfly" cluster.
I can't see how this open cluster in Cancer got it's name. Is one of the star groups in this cluster a trinary system? It looks like it.
Another open cluster in Cancer. Open clusters are OK, but I'm not of the temperment to live off an exclusive diet of them...
At 53X, this pair in Ursa Major is among my favorite views in the sky. I could stare at them for an hour without looking at anything else. After some time to study and adapt, I stared to think I could see the jet from the core of M82. Did I? (Nah, I've just been looking at too many glossy magazine pictures.)
I know I've omitted some old favorites like M31, M33, and M45 that I look at anytime they're up. I also got a stunning planetary view of Jupiter and Saturn through Rich's 7" refractor with the binoviewers, and an awesome view of the Crab nebula in someone's 25" dob.
While I was waiting for some more objects on my list to rise, I saw the Zodiacal light, and the eastern horizon was starting to glow brighter. I packed up my stuff and decided to get some sleep while it was still cool.
All in all it was a great site and a great event. I appeaciate the work Mark Wagner and the SJAA board went to to put it together. I'm anxious to go to that site again.