by Jim Ster
Mags and I met Gregg and Larry there about 8:30 pm on Friday the 22nd. Temps were in the 60's and there was a slight breeze and no clouds. At one point just before the end of twilight, a gust of wind caught Gregg's 25" beast and sent it spinning towards his ladder. He leaped up from his chair and snagged it just before it would have slammed into his ladder. Nice save, but the wind was always a concern.
While it did get very dark that evening, the seeing was very soft, probably due to high altitude turbulence. I gave it a 6 out of 10. We ended up spending much of the evening looking at a bunch of nebulae with Gregg's 25". It always blows me away to see the Veil through it with an OIII. It is so incredibly bright. Mars was very bright in sky, but the soft seeing ruined any chance of a good view.
One high point in the evening for me came when I mentioned that I was looking for a 55mm TeleVue Plossl for my collection. I enjoy doing the SVAS public outreach gigs but I'm a little leery of using my 31 mm Nagler at them because of the potential of a bunch of kids pawing all over it. Albeit the 55 mm is about half the magnification as my 31mm, but it has a similar FOV, and most important, I won't have to worry about it so much. Gregg's ears perked up as he had one that he never uses (except as a door stop) due to it's 12 mm exit pupil in his f4.5. In my f10, it has a 5.5 mm exit pupil. He loaned it to me for the evening to check out. As we finished up for the evening, I asked Gregg what he wanted for it. In the end, I swapped him my 2" Lumicon OIII for it. We both came out winners.
Mags and I packed up and left around 4:00am and headed to the cabin up on HWY 207. It took about 45 minutes to drive it. That afternoon, the clouds picked up and along with the wind, wiped out any hope of observing that evening. All in all it was a pretty disappointing observing trip due to the weather, but at least we were being miserable in a nice cabin at Lake Tahoe, so how bad could it have been, right?