by Jay Freeman
On December 14, 2001, I drove to Fremont Peak for an observing session, and thought for a time that I had been foolish, for although I departed from Palo Alto in cloudless sky, high stratus had moved in by the time I arrived at the peak, and what is more, no one else was there. I turned about and headed homeward, but a look at the sky to the north and west suggested that conditions would clear, so back to the peak I went -- and what do you know, clear it did! That was an evening when freezing temperatures and high winds had been forecast, but it was both calmer and warmer than the weather folks had suggested, so it really was a pity that more folks weren't out. It was cold enough that I didn't want to know the details, however, so I didn't set up my temperature/dewpoint instrument. It was, however, pretty dry.
I set up my new Orion 127 mm f/12.1 Maksutov-Cassegrain, which I have adapted to my NexStar 8 mount. This telescope is much less cumbersome than the NexStar 8 itself, which makes for very fast setup. My observing program was to continue working on a Herschel-400 survey that I am making with that instrument. Five inches of aperture are more than enough for the H400, and the Mak's long focal length makes my Vixen 8-24 mm zoom eyepiece very useful; at 24 mm, 64x is a quite reasonable magnification for faint diffuse objects, whereas 192x, at 8 mm, is plenty to bring the telescope's full resolving power to bear on globular clusters and the like.
I was working the region of the list between zero and six hours of right ascension. There is quite a lot of pretty stuff here, that is often overlooked by the run-of-the-mill Messier hunters. I am always impressed by bright planetary NGC 1535 in Eridanus, by nearly edge-on galaxies NGC 247 and 253, and by the large globular cluster NGC 288. It is also fun to be reminded that there are other things than the Orion Nebula in Orion.
A nice thing about winter observing is that you can get done early enough that there are still restaurants open. I went home by way of Santa cruz and had a midnight snack at that most astonomically-titled of diners, the Saturn Cafe.
The next evening I arrived at the Dinosaur Point boat launch area at San Luis Reservoir, at about dusk, with two giant pizzas. I had to spread out the pizza boxes on top of my instrument cases, so could not set up until all the pizza was eaten. My fellow observers were most sympathetic to my plight, though, and the food did not last long.
My telescope on the second night was another Orion in the 5-inch class, a 120 mm f/5 refractor, which I have put on a very simple altazimuth mount. I was mostly doing Messier work with it. This instrument is in essence half of a battleship binocular, and provides spectacular wide-field, low-magnification views, in the rich-field telescope tradition. On that night I used solely a Meade 20 mm Research-Grade Erfle eyepiece, for 30x. The night began with fair amounts of high cloud, but improved, and by 10 PM or so I was able to watch clusters rise over the ridge line to the south of the parking area.
I took down after completing a fair chunk of my Messier survey with the 120. I had the 127 Mak with me, but decided to wander around and chat instead of setting it up. Seeing was pretty good; I had views through two different 14.5-inch Dobsons of theta-one Orionis at magnifications near 100x, both of which showed six stars in the Trapezium easily. Someone had a Celestron 9.25-inch Schmidt Cassegrain, and on my suggestion we took a look at Sirius. Alas, the view at 500x was not nearly as good as at lower magnification: It might have been possible to see the Pup in steadier sky, but not then and there.
I drove home rather early -- I was out of there before midnight. I trust the many who remained enjoyed continued good conditions.