by David Staples
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 22/23 Sept 2001 |
| Time | 2130-0200 PDT 0430-0900 UTC |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA, 38°43'N 123°02'W Elev ~1400 (Lone Rock Flat) |
| Weather | Cool, Comfortable, no wind |
| Equip. | C8, 40, 26mm, 10mm plossls, 2x barlow |
| Seeing | 9/10 |
| Trans. | 5-8/10 |
After a late start I finally made to the lake at about 9:30. When I arrived the clouds filled most of the southern sky and I was feeling like it was going to be a repeat of the previous weekends washout. Fortunately as the moon went away so did the clouds. Even clouds went away it was obvious it was going to be an exceptional night from a seeing stand point.
The highlight of the night turned out to be Saturn. Even sitting low to the east it was impressive the amount of detail I could resolve with my puny 8" scope. For the first time I was able to see the Enke division and Crepe ring (didn't know it was the Crepe until Matt M. pointed it out) and a nice brown band was visible on the planet just south of the equator.
The seeing supported mags of 400x and better (450+ in Scott's C14) with the shadow of the planet on the rings lending a real 3d feel to the view.
My target list for the night was a continuing Messier survey so I won't bore everybody with descriptions of objects that have been described hundreds of times before with a couple of exceptions.
I was able to bag 9 new objects, M30, M2, M15, M72, M73(yawn), M74, missed 75 darn it, M76, and M77.
M30 - After a few frustrating moments fumbling around in an unfamiliar Capricorn, I found this nice glob. It was fun to be able to be able to pump up the mag and really drill down into the core. I like this one because of the 2 strings of stars that extended up from the core making it seem like a little alien with antennae.
M2 - Wow another really nice glob. M13 is great but it's not alone in the sky.
All in all it was a really great night (after the clouds moved out) and what a great view of Saturn, first of the season for me.