A TAC Exclusive
by Jeff Barbour
The Giants won 7-6 in the 11th inning.
After a "grueling weekend" of star parties and other nocturnal vigils, everyone was ready for a break. So roll up them portable armchairs. Grab a bag of your favorite munchies. Congregate - like some kind of astronomical campfire - around a single scope, and take turns turning up faint fuzzies.
No plan. No charts. Small, quality, well-mounted, and unobstructed aperture. Fair, but visibly less than optimal, seeing. Add whatever modest visual and navigational skills you can bring to bear. And you're off to see with "the wizard" - their phrase, not mine...
Using Phil's FS-102 Takahashi on Losmandy mount at about 50x, Tammy found 7. Phil, James, and I, 6 in the M84/86 "Galaxy Field of Dreams". The toughest, magnitude 12.0, 2x1 arc-minute sized NGC4387 centered in the equilateral triangle formed by M84/86 and NGC4388 was Tammy's exclusive preserve. Who needs a big dob?
All eyes resolved stars in M13 and picked out 10th magnitude irregular galaxies NGC 2976 and 3077 in the region of M81&82. No challenge here...
M44's 12.7 magnitude test star could be held direct by Tammy at 170x. The rest of us needed slight aversion. ("Geepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers.")
James played "seismograph" by attaching himself to the tailgate of Phil's SUV. (Reports are that the quake - occuring sometime after 10pm PDT, was about the same magnitude as Zeta but centered in Gilroy instead of Cancer.)
One by one, the classical planets followed the Sun over the horizon. Only Jupiter remained visible as the last of five vehicles left the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve and the gate was locked safely behind us.
Earlier Lynn had joined us, camera in hand, and took some fine digital shots of the alignment. But the consensus was that the "ceremonial traingle" formed by Saturn, Venus, and Mars last week was perhaps the highpoint of this particular planetary alignment.
Despite an illustration published in the SF Chronicle, there was no way to squeeze both Mercury and the Moon into the same low power ST80 field - binoculars yes, scope no.