by Ivor Barker
Well, on Friday evening, as I was setting up Maxwell my 10 inch coffee grinder (better known as an LX-200) I was hoping to get one full cloudless night in at Bumpass, I had even taken the unprecedented step of making up an imaging list, moving Maxwell round to line up the Telrad and finderscope, the little glass window slid out and smashed on the floor, oh no! A couple of pieces of duct tape (thanks Eric) later, I had a half-Telrad.
Maxwell polar aligned like a dream and the stars were so plentiful it was difficult to make out the constellations.
My planning was not so perfect as Lynx was disappearing behind hill to the west so that was ngc 2683 "UFO Galaxy" ngc2537 "Bear Paw Galaxy" off my list. I slewed to Cygnus and went at it with the Cocoon Nebula. The guider was behaving like a champ so I wandered off to "imagers row" to see what everyone else was up to.
What an amazing site, it was difficult to tell who was who as it was so dark.
I wandered back in time to set up for my next target, ngc6888, the Crescent Nebula Rob MacKay was also shooting the crescent with his C8 Fastar setup on his GT-ONE mount, we'll have to compare images later Rob !
I chatted to "3 Dob Bob" Czerwinski he was chasing down some really faint fuzzies, he took a break and helped me look for the "Draco Dwarf" the surface brightness was too low even for his wonderful 14" Starmaster.
I back to my imaging list, a little edge on galaxy ngc 5907 in Draco was next, this is quite a bright object with a promise of some fine detail.
People were leaving more frequently now, so I was being conscious of the 30 minute rule for my imaging sessions, unfortunately the people leaving were not keeping to it.
Over to Aquarius now, ngc7293 the Helix, its very big, I was not sure I could get it all in at f/3.3, but I did.
A revisit to an old friend ngc 891 in Andromeda, my, its nearly winter !, then as old Sol was threatening I made ngc7635 the Bubble nebula my last port of call.
I packed up and was the last one to leave in daylight thinking my unintentional sacrifice to the cloud god worked.
What a great week at Lassen !!