by Matthew Marcus
I went to Lake Sonoma on Saturday, driving through a couple of sprinkles. By sundown, I was the only one there so I figured everyone else had wimped out. Fortunately, someone with a 12.5" Dob (sorry, I forget your name) and Yi-Zen's Berkeley Astro group showed up so I had company.
The weather was sort of odd; the clouds would roll in, then quickly clear out leaving some or all of the sky sparkling for 15-30min., then roll back in. By about midnight, the clear periods were getting shorter and the cloudy ones longer, so everybody else left, leaving me alone. After that, thin clouds remained everywhere, so after some frustration in trying to see 12'th mag stuff, I left at 1:30.
The wind was pretty fierce until an hour or so after sundown, after which it was calm and I was comfy in my many layers.
When the sky was good, it was quite good, with the zodiacal light plainly visible in the West. Jupiter and Saturn provided a handy marker for the ecliptic, allowing me to be sure that what I took to be the Zodiacal light really was and not a light dome. The seeing was good to poor. I was able to split a 1.5" double (eta Ori) but not to see the Enke feature on Saturn.
What with the erratic visibility and the presence of people who hadn't seen some of the objects most of us are familiar with, I didn't do much Serious Observing, with logsheets and all. However, I did look at the following objects:
I followed the S&T listing of the M96 group and as the above list shows, got them all. I like galaxy-hopping!
Bootes is an interesting constellation in that it has only one object brighter than mag 11 (5466) and dozens in the 11-14 range. It's somewhat unusual that such a big patch of sky should have so little eye-candy in it. I think it's a preserve for big scopes.
Anyway, I was glad to get out and observe; this pattern of clear weekdays and rainy weekends SUCKS! A poor session under the sky is still better than spending the night in front of the TV.