The Beast and the Bear

by Richard Navarrete

I talked a couple of friends into a Tuesday night observing session at Henry Coe State park on April 2. I was unsure if I would be able to get out on the weekend and didn't want to miss an opportunity to continue work on the Herschel 400 list. I had 82 object left, all in the constellations ofUrsa Major,Virgo, and Coma Berenices. My plan was to find and observe the 26 objects on the list remaining inUrsa Major, the Great Bear. An ambitious plan I thought, since moonrise was at 12:30. My observing instrument is a Meade 16" solid tube dob that I call The Beast. In terms of size and bulk it is a beast, but even so I can set-up and take down by myself, although it is easier with a friend to help. I used a TeleVue 22 Panoptic, and Orion 16.8 and 10.5 Megavista eyepieces. All give wonderful 68 degree fields of views and contrasty images.

The sky in the Bay Area had been pretty hazy the past couple of days, but as I drove up the 2000 or so feet to Henry Coe, the sky began to get much bluer. When I got to the spot my friends were already there, and I saw they were bundled up. Not the greatest of news. When I got out of the truck, I found it to be breezy and cool, and there was already fog developing in the lower areas. Even at 5o'clock we were getting worried about being covered with overcast. Still, we set up, ate dinner together and prepared for the nights observing. Sure enough, as night fell, the clouds began to overtake us, and everything was getting wet with dew. Luckily there were sucker holes and the biggest was right over the Bear! I got right to work, and to my surprise I was landing on target after target just aiming with my dewed over Telrad. This was fun! I soon discovered that there are a LOT of bright and interesting galaxies inUrsa ! Major. We had about an hours time when secondaries and eyepieces began to get dewed over. Luckily I had brought a small hair dryer and battery and was able to carry it all around to clear our gear. We were thinking about packing it in as things were getting to the point of needing drying every five minutes, but we'd been observing enough in the area to know that many times the fog will drop.

Sure enough, it did, up and down for a time, and finally we were above the fog, the area below us was totally socked in, and we were enjoying the darkest skies I'd ever seen in the Bay Area.

I finally started packing up at 12:15, knowing that the moon was about to rise. I had an incredibly successful night of hunting and observing. I did reach my target of finding the objects on my list inUrsa Major, plus many more. I finished with 56 total new objects which included 12 galaxy groups.

The largest grouping allowed me to fit 8 galaxies in one eyepiece field.

That was NGC 4261 inVirgo. Below is my list of objects and some comments.

The first * means the object is on the Herschel 400 list, if there is a second * it means that it was an interesting or favorite object, two ** means it's a must see view.

Just before packing up I went on a tour of some eye candy. M51, M57, M13, Markarians chain, M81 and 82, The Leo Triplet. They were all spectacular with incredible detail. The view through Mark Wagners 18" Obsession of M101 was incredible. Probably the best I'd ever seen.

The Beast met the Bear, and the Beast won.

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