by Rob Mackie
Once again I had the entire Lone Rock viewing area at Lake Sonoma to myself Friday night. Conditions were good...clear, decent transparency, temperature in the mid 50's and no wind.
I left the dob at home and brought my 4" Tak FS-102 Apo refractor on a Gibraltar altaz mount. I'm a sucker for pin point stars and wide fields, so the refractor got the call. Arriving at 8:30 PM, my intent was to identify all the M objects in Virgo and Coma. Using charts printed with the latest version of Cartes du Ciel (terrific piece of software!) this was easy. Cartes allows one to reverse the image left-right, thus generating a FOV as seen through a refractor. Using panoptic 27 and 35 eyepieces (2 -3 degree FOV)I was often able to frame multiple M objects in a single FOV as I worked my way up the deep sky highway between Vendiamatrix and Denebola. The charts also enabled me to identify numerous dim NGC objects adjacent to my intended targets. Some of these rather dim objects would have escaped notice, but my chart said they were there. With a bit of patiece and averted vision they were. One gives up brightness and "reach" when using a small refractor, but the wide field gives a sense of context to faint fuzzies that I find pleasing.
Having accomplished my objective, it was time for eye candy, of which there was no shortage Friday evening. Prior to departing at midnight I turned my binocs on the northeast sky seeking M13 and stumbled upon an impossibly bright globular cluster. This confused me not a little as there shouldn't have been anything of the kind in this section of the sky. I turned my refractor on the object thinking I could resolve it to individual stars. No luck. Finally the 3 degree field of my Panoptic 35 showed a tail. Yes, I had stumbled on Ikeya Zhang, but thinking it was no longer in view, was temporarily stumped by this "mystery obect". So much for my my knowledge of the night sky. Those of you visiting Lake Sonoma Saturday night, don't miss it. It's at about 30 - 35 degrees in the Northeast at midnight...a real crowd pleaser (even if you're only a crowd of one).