by Jamie Dillon
Saturday last, the 18th, was my first night out with the scope since July at Lassen. Had been back East in very dark places, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and on Martha's Vineyard off Massachusetts, with persistent overcast, one night with the Milky Way out for some 45 minutes. So I was eager.
Interesting array of pleasures that night. FPOA had the Starbecue, all festive, with both new rangers there, clearly decent sorts. A couple guys from Santa Cruz were at the SW lot with serious solar gear. This one long rectangular scope with German optics and a brand new cutting edge H-alpha filter (bandpass 0.2 Angstroms for crying out loud) was flat spectacular. Saw granulation for days, with what looked like rilles, what I was told were the tops of prominences across the face.
No one I knew in the SW lot as folks were setting up (7-8 scopes at sunset). Then a pickup parked right spang next to Annie Jump and I was hoping they were friendly, and here Jim Everitt emerges, having just gotten back from Lassen. Before dark we cruised Coulter, where a welter of scopes were up, not a soul we knew. Cool, huh?
Jeff Crilly came over from the Starbecue, as did Dave and Akkana, which made for a total of 5 TACos on the mountain to my knowledge. Bob Garfinkel was mooching photons and paid for his keep by letting on when to expect the ISS and Shuttle. Mike Koop was on hand, as he has been 2/2 times I've seen the ISS. Everitt caught them in his 15", while I tried and finally resorted to binocs. A genuine thrill.
The other naked eye thrill was at the other end of the night, at 4 am, with Saturn, Jupiter and Venus in a row, Saturn off the Hyades and Jupiter and Venus at the feet of Gemini. Wonderful.
And yes some deepsky work got done in the interest of science. I was out to chase globulars in southern Ophiuchus and spent a chunk of time between M19 and M62. The beauty prize went to 6293, just east of M19. At 210x it showed a bright core with swirls in its halo. A good while later I chased some galaxies in Pegasus, didn't get NGC 7753, W of Alpheratz. Turns out to have a surface brightness of 14.0, so I can sleep at night now; 14.0 is just at Felix's limit. Did end up observations with 7678 in Pegasus, a diffuse patch nested inside a kite of 4 stars, with an irregular, spread-out shape.
The night itself was lovely, warm and dry, seeing decent at 4/5, with transparency 5.8 at best. (Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians.)
Gonna do more of this stuff.