| Observer | Jason Newquist |
|---|---|
| Location | Fremont Peak State Park |
| Date | June 15, 2001 |
| Transparency | Fair |
| Seeing | Good to Very Good |
| Weather | Warm, with a dull breeze. |
| Moon | None until about 2am. |
| Equipment | Discovery 10 |
| Session Objectives | Messier survey |
I took my new scope up to the Peak with a good friend, Mike Newton, whose own 10-inch Discovery Premium DHQ is en route and should arrive in the next week. He hadn't seen mine at work in the field yet, so we resolved to brave the weekend traffic and gather with about 10 other telescopes at the Peak, to work on my Messier list - and maybe catch a view of Mars, if conditions permitted. We set up, as I have always done, in the southwest lot. A couple people went over to Coulter Row and the Observatory to see if the dusk winds were any less prevalent, but things seemed to be pretty much the same, so everyone set up in the lot.
We had the usual traffic of cars and passers-by (it took 2.5 hours to get to the Peak from Santa Clara, but only 1 hour to get back). People are always interested in looking at the stars, even if they're not deeply fascinated enough in the hobby to purchase a telescope. I was able to speak intelligently to a few people, which is a first for me. :-)
As twilight passed into darkness, the wind changed into a dull breeze. With my LaserMax holographic collimator, collimation was a snap. I love this thing! It's pricey at $239, but well worth the dough.
I have a bunch of Messier targets in the vicinity of Virgo, another bunch around Sagittarius, and a scattering around the rest of the sky. I used my new SkyTools software to print out 3-stage finder charts for each of the objects in my Messier survey that I have yet to hit. These would, over the next two nights, turn out to be of ENORMOUS utility. Given the position of the Peak itself, I decided to try for the scattered objects. Virgo was already close to the sky glow, and Sagittarius would not be in good position until perhaps 2am -- if ever. But I also wanted Mike to check out some of the showpiece objects, so we added some of those to our program for the night.
| M13 | Found in the emerging darkness. Puffy in 35 Panoptic, but very nice in the 12 Nagler. Tightly-framed in the 7mm Nagler and as another observer noted, "like an open cluster" in the 4 Radian. |
|---|---|
| Mars | Mike located this. Position was poor, and the view was extremely fuzzy as the planet was occulted by the leaves of trees atop the crest of the hill. |
| M40 | This crazy thing. How could Messier have mistaken this for a comet? I don't understand. Nevertheless, here it is, a double star. |
| M109 | Barely there, still in the late evening glow. Can tell that it's inclined somewhat. A bright core. |
| M57 | The Ring Nebula. Definite ring in 7mm. Mike enjoyed the view. |
| M68 | Glob. Much dimmer than M13 (of course), but better than M13 as it appears in my 4" apo. Impression of trapezoidness from some of the brighter stars in the field. |
| M95 | In the sky glow muck, but barely there. Still waiting for twilight to expire. |
| M96 | Brighter than M95, though not by much. Seems more elliptical, too. |
| M102 | Mike found this one. Much brighter than M95/M96, this is an edge-on galaxy that's almost knife-like. Very neat! |
| M107 | Okay glob. Located in a bowl of 4 stars. |
| Mars | Better positioned, now. Seeing was intermittently good. Saw a non-uniform but seemingly continuous dark band going from 7 o'clock to around 1 o'clock on the planetary disk. There was also a stand-alone dark spot toward the edge of the disk around 5 o'clock. |
| M12 | Nice and bright and loose. Mike called it a "clear" view. Good word. Well-resolved. |
| M10 | Also well-resolved. A bit dimmer than M12, and more compact. |
| M14 | Much fainter than M10 or M12. Hints of resolution in the 12 Nagler, but better and more resolved in the 7 Nagler. |
| M92 | Wow! Resolved to the core. Nearly spiral. |
| M13 | We went back to M13. Much more impressive! |
| M71 | On a rich galactic field, a compact condensation of nicely resolved stars. |
| M27 | The Dumbell. Mike and I took turns trying to locate this in the eyepiece, and he ended up nailing it. Very nice. 2 obvious nodes. Bright and puffy. |
| M56 | Compact and dim, and not very well resolved in the 12 Nagler. |
| M15 | Very finely resolved. Delicate. Bright core. Looking up, the band of the Milky Way was very impressive in the sky. When I grew up, I rarely paid attention to the summer sky -- probably because it appeared so late. The Milky Way is really nice to look at. |
| M39 | Open cluster in a rich field. Another one of those objects I wonder how Messier mistook for a comet. I don't like open clusters, I think, nearly as much as other types of DSO. This one barely fit in the 35 Panoptic. |
| M29 | Another open cluster in Cygnus. Just a few stars. |
| M51 | In light dome, but still can see spiral structure. |
| NGC 6960 | The Veil Nebula. Dim but impressive in 35 Panoptic. More contrast in 12 Nagler, but limited FOV gives less impact. |
| M103 | Open cluster. Fairly unremarkable. |
Around 2am, a bunch of us started packing up, and we were out by 2:15. A busy evening. Lots of fun.
This was the first time out with the new Teflon altitude bearing pads in place. Previously, Albert Highe offered to replace the stock nylon pads with larger, closer Teflon pads - and wow. They really made a difference! I could move the scope with my hand on the focuser knob, for example, something I wasn't able to even consider before. I was able to nudge things to keep an object smoothly in the field, even at 381x, and it didn't seem jerky. Success! I am very pleased.
I went out the next night (first time doing back-to-back observing!) to Coe with a larger crowd hoping for fine seeing and more time to crunch of Messiers. With the superior southern horizons, I would also consider some more distant planetary viewing...