by Jamie Dillon
Kiddies, don't get the notion to be stargazers when you grow up. You'll get in with bad companions, you'll lose a whole lot of beauty sleep, and you'll develop lopsided values.
A vivid admonitory example was the scene in Case de Coffee, with Czerwinski, Crilly and Dillon eating pie (except for Crilly who I swear ate a full breakfast, sausage, eggs up, white toast) at 3 am and having a big time. We'd had a night of high comedy with the night sky. Everything Matthew and Peter said is true. Jeff's thermometer needs calibrating.
Just at moonset a whole set of high scud came in. So unfair. There was a major exodus, and then the sky cleared. It was breathtaking naked eye, with seeing 2/5, fair. 5 stars in the Trap max; beta Mon was boiling, with the B/C split difficult, none of its gorgeous color. That same coincidental observation got both Kingsley and me to pack up, from different ends of the lot. Several of us stopped several times while packing up, looked up in awe at the sky, said out loud, "I can't believe I'm packing up under this sky."
The sick thing is that everyone of us had fun.
Great crew, 13 of us with an interesting variety of scopes. The Weasel did bring some great pizza, Kingsley brought his new 14.5, to major oohs and aahs. Jason was there with Black Bart, Suzanne had a fine Orion XT-10, Woody was there with Kevin S., Matthew had his great pair of scopes, Peter had the aperture, Derek had a marvel of 13" engineering. And in honesty there were some moments of excitement.
Navarrete had just mentioned 2655, got me to jump up in my chair:
NGC 2655 is a bright galaxy in Camelopardelis. Round, with two mag 7ish stars on either side.
First object of the night for me. Had two galaxies in Cam to finish the whole northern part of the sky in Edmund's Mag 6, 2655 and 2146. 2655 is an interesting galaxy; Ozer and I each spent some time there. I saw a bright core, face-on shape, with a twirl in the arms, interesting at 126x. 2146 is biggish, spread out, diffuse core with an irregular halo out to 5' diameter.
Albert found the Intergalactic Wanderer in his 6" without a magnifying finder in bright moonlight. Came over to find it in Felix, cf the view. I still hadn't seen 2419, so it was a thrill for me. , No joke, it looked distant! Jiggling the scope and using a.v., though, the core brightened. A monster to show like that at ca 300,000 l.y. (Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm Radian, with a Lumicon OIII.)
Kingsley, Czerwinski, Crilly and I made a joint project of following in the footsteps of the Astro Animal, who was studying IC 443 and 2174-2175 at Lake Sonoma earlier. Jeff's scope took the prize with 443 in spotting a lovely bright knot, with curves and obvious curdling. Felix with the OIII showed a strip of nebulosity. It's just not every day you see a new supernova remnant. 2174 is lovely and bright, an emission nebula amid a bright set of stars. My other new object was 1999, south of M42, which I'd somehow missed. Looked like a compact distant galaxy with bright core, is in fact a bright little EN.
Before leaving we were looking reverently at Berenice's Hair hovering above Los Banos in the East, sure sign of spring coming.
Bless all of us fools.