by Bob Czerwinski
(Thanks for providing the lead-in, Mr. Navarrete! <grin>)
It was a nice night at Fremont Peak. Just a small group, with about seven or eight 'scopes set up. Upwards of a dozen people early on. Sky conditions certainly weren't the best I've ever seen, but it was definitely a fun, low-key evening.
Skies and temperatures throughout the evening apparently matched those of Coe, but with no dust or wind to speak of. Alan Zaza, who took some pictures of an incredible sunset, reported the temperature was still around 60F about Midnight. About that time I noticed that fog was starting to form along the coast; the Moss Beach Power Plant lights were finally fading out.
I think just about everybody started off the evening with views of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. That one barge on the west side of Jupiter's NEB was so dark, I originally thought it was the trailing shadow of Io. My first early-twilight view of the M42 area, where the sky was very clear, showed six very-easy stars in the Trap, with huge gaps for the E&F stars. Wonderful seeing near the zenith as well, with Castor an easy split in even the smaller 'scopes. At the same time, the view to the E/SE was just terrible, opaque as anything. Five minutes later, I was having a bit of trouble with the Trap, with the E&F stars difficult to discern. Two minutes later, they were quite distinct again. This set the stage for the rest of the night: The seeing/transparency throughout the evening would vary dramatically, even over the course of a minute or so, depending upon the area of sky you were checking out. Patience was definitely the key to DSO hunting last night. Even though skies were brighter than we'd have liked, the overall transparency did continue to improve throughout the evening - thank you Mr. Danko - and by 10:30pm or so, the views to the E/SE were *very* nice.
After fooling around in the twilight, I continued my hunt for faint fuzzies in Ursa Major. I logged 26 new galaxies with the 12.5" Starmaster (17mm Nagler [107x w/ Paracorr]), to include the elusive NGC 3319 I'd had so much trouble with from Dino back on Groundhog Day. Based upon a Friday-night observation report from Albert Highe, I tried 3319 again last night, and this time had no trouble at all finding this baby. A relatively easy star-hop from 34-Mu, one of the Great Bear's hind feet.
Looks like my 'scope's limiting magnitude, galaxy wise, was about 14.1 last night. At least, that's the dimmest object I logged. Had a couple of galaxies targeted in the range of 14.3~14.4 or so, but couldn't find 'em even though I had their fields properly identified via TheSky program. (Yes, I'm assuming TheSky has these properly charted, even though Mark Wagner et al. has demonstrated you can't always trust the program. <grin>) Don't recall their surface brightness, but I'll have to look 'em up later.
The Bowl of The Dipper was where I spent most of my time last night; I had an absolute blast there. Just before packing up, I shared Terminagler (31mm-T5) views of Markarian's chain with a couple of folk, running from M84 in Virgo to M88 in Coma Berenices. The evening was interspersed with items like this, with folk sharing views of classic items such as M81/M82, M65/M66, M101, M51, M104, etc. It was a great way to end my session.
An early evening for all, I was the last to depart the Peak, heading home about 1:30am. I spent my last 20-minutes at the Peak just staring up at the sky while sipping a hot drink. Hope everybody else had as nice an evening as I did.