A small group of six observers spent some quality time under the stars at our Del Valle site, behind the fireroad gate, in Livermore. In addition to myself, there was my friend, Steve Bourne, capturing first light with his recently-acquired 5.5" f/3.3 Comet Catcher; Edward and Lia Broadnax from Tracy, who are new to our group, with their Orion 6" f/5 equatorial Newt, Craig Lambert with his drop-dead gorgeous Ceravolo 8.5" f/6 Mak-Newt, and John Zonfrello with his lovely TV85 refractor. I was there to take CCD images with my older A-P 6" f/8 refractor.
Steve and I arrived at 8:30pm, about 30 mins later than hoped. Craig, Edward and Lia were ready and waiting near the gate. After we drove in and everyone began to set up, I noticed that there was a thin but significant cloud layer covering much of the sky. I hoped this would go away, and my hope was rewarded. We had a quality evening at DV, with warm temps early, dropping later but never cold; zero dew; pretty good transparency; and seeing that was mostly very good although we had periods when it degraded.
I had a problem, or more accurately, I learned something new about my mount's elevation fine adjustment. This cost me about an hour during drift polar alignment. Despite that, the lovely conditions made me feel relaxed and unhurried. I did manage to take images of three popular tourist attractions, all came out well:
http://members.home.com/csterngold/ccd/lagoon.jpg
http://members.home.com/csterngold/ccd/trifid.jpg
http://members.home.com/csterngold/ccd/swan.jpg
In addition to imaging, we took a brief gander at Mars through my refractor. There was some detail at 240x with a TV 5mm Radian, but the view was much better at 150x through an 8mm Brandon (man, I love those Brandons!). I also tried to split Porrima: seeing was unsteady at the time, but the thin dark line between the two lobes was clear and sharp at moments.
Steve did a great job with his new scope. He is just becoming familiar with the sky, and chose to find objects using the small setting circles on his Polaris mount. He did an amazing job using just those for navigation! (His scope has no finder yet.) The Comet Catcher provided nice views of M13, M51, M22, and the Lagoon.
