6/16 at Coe

The Night Black Bart Came to Town

by Jason Newquist

Breezy one hour commute to Coe on Saturday. As is so common at Coe, the day-time wind was substantial, causing twilight to be cooler than it was at the Peak the night before.

Mars was prominently displayed to the east of the great southern tree, and the collection of about 15 scopes started grabbing views around 8:30pm. Initial detail on Mars was worse than the Peak the night before, but matched the Peak by 10pm. By 11pm, it was exceptionally better, and by midnight, was outstanding. At every point, planetary detail on Mars was the litmus test. I returned to it over and over again, in many scopes throughout the night. One of the most memorable views was Mars in Mark Wagner's 18" Obsession, which occurred sometime after 11pm, as I remember it, when the seeing began to allow astonishing detail. The damn thing seemed LUNAR.

I started the evening with Messier objects in my "Virgo" pile, even though that part of the sky was heading into the muck.

Earlier in the evening, Jamie came over to talk about stuff and offer advice on locating a couple objects, and he mentioned that he found Antares difficult to split in Felix, given previous conditions. The first time I viewed it, the seeing wasn't good enough for me to consider it split, but I definitely suspected a companion at the same point. By 11pm, with solid skies, I was able to split it. There was clear and present darkness between it, a wonderful glowing orange, and its companion which seemed to have hints of bluishness to me, when it had color at all.

At this point, Virgo was taking a dive into San Jose, and I noticed that the teapot was coming up nicely. I changed gears and broke out my target list for that area - but I only went after a couple objects before I realized that that the most distant planets in our solar system were coming into view.

At this point, it was around midnight, and I sketched Mars in the eyepiece. The detail was quite nice. I was thus inspired to see if I could use my 10 inch scope could capture Pluto. Ophiuchus was up a reasonable distance, so it was worth a shot.

Armed with Pluto finder charts from SkyTools, finding the planet didn't take that long. Perhaps 5 minutes. It seemed to be on the very edge of visibility, but was there - tack sharp. It blinked in and out, but was more there twice as often as it was not. Jamie stopped by and suggested that we ask Nilesh to confirm. We spent a couple minutes using his laptop and TheSky. The field of view matched precisely my printed chart. Nilesh viewed it in the eyepiece and confirmed that its blinking behavior is very typical, in his experience. I sat down in my lawn chair feeling proud of myself and just enjoying the Milky Way galaxy approach the zenith. Wow. I saw Pluto. I basked and relaxed for a while, and walked around the group.

When I got back to my own scope, it was around 1am. I checked the position of Capricornus, which is where Neptune and Uranus presently reside. I scooped up my finder charts for Neptune and went at it. Neptune was in the middle of the constellation, but closer to the tip bound by Beta Cap. The immediate star field was less distinctive than Pluto's, so it took about 10 minutes of hunting to track it down, but it was definitely there. It was without color, and had a very small disk in the 4 Nagler. One size up from pinpoint, but it had an obviously different quality of light about it.

On a roll, I grabbed for my Uranus charts. Uranus was outside the capricorn, in a triangle formed by Delta, Mu and 42 Cap, along and just inside of the Mu-42 side. Wow. MUCH larger than Neptune, but also colorless, this was clearly a planetary disk even in the 12 Nagler.

It was a 4-planet night for me, and I was feeling good. Having tracked down the most distant planets gave me a sense of genuine accomplishment. I have now observed all nine planets. Like Jamie said, per Freeman's rules I am free to begin work in earnest on my Messiers!

By this time, I was stunned to realize that Cassiopeia was up and the second DSO I'd ever observed was also visible over the southeastern ridge. I trained my scope on M31, the Andromeda galaxy. It was very low in the sky, which afforded poor transparency, but still marvelous. It was the first time I'd seen M31 in this new scope of mine. Also visible were companion galaxies M32 and M110.

Tonight the black 10-inch Discovery had done well. Fellow observer Erik Ayres, who has an imaging rig around an SCT, as well as a splendid 4 inch apo for visual work, took multiple views through the Discovery 10. He and I were impressed with its sharpness and clarity. Jamie also liked the scope and used the word "sharp" to describe its optics. After knocking a few folks socks off, and fetching awesome detail on Mars (along with most other scopes out there!), and snatching Pluto tonight - I figure the ol' scope has earned his stripes.

He's Black Bart. He's not the biggest gun in town, but he does good with what he's got.

Also, how can you argue with coincidence? Look at this:

• The real Black Bart, C. E. Bolton, shares his surname with my mother. The man is practically family!

• He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, just like our latter-day Bart does.

• His modus operandi was to leave town, and range over northern and central California to find Wells Fargo stage coaches - not unlike how the new Bart likes to leave urban light pollution to find photons.

• Both Barts' primary tools had barrels. Bullets left that of the former, and photons enter those of the latter.

• He liked to leave poems at the scene of his crimes, not unlike how I write these reports in the wake of Black Bart's fast shootin'.

And so, there it is. Black Bart is back in town, boys and girls. Hang on to yer photons!

I'm having a lot of fun with Bart. 10 inches is a really... well, *fun* size. Looking back on things, I think, if I had it to do over again, that I should have started with a scope like this. If I had, hell, I might be up to a 15-incher by now. But despite the terror I feel at the thought of turning 30 next year, I figure I've got a few more good years in me. And Black Bart probably has some good years in him, too.

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