by Jane Houston Jones
There was a small group at Lone Pine Flat, Lake Sonoma last night, transparency LM 6.4 (11 stars in the Virgo chart 10) in that part of the sky, not as good as that in other areas, seeing average, temps 50 or below, humidity high. There were alto-stratus in the east. We left after moonrise at 2:00 a.m. and got home a little after 3:00 a.m. There were 5 scopes and some interesting binos there. Mojo worked the 11th hour Herschels, and I checked off some some galaxy clusters in Bootes and Corona Borealis and a few other places. We were using our 14.5 and 17.5 reflectors last night.
The other telescopes there last night were interesting. We recently were given a f/7.6 8-inch dobsonclass-made reflector from a friend who had to move to NYC and didn't have room for the 'scope there. So I washed the mirror, and gave it a center dot decal, removed some cobwebs from the rocker box, put in a new longer center bolt so it is sturdier, checked the teflon-to-vinyl-33rpm record azimuth motion, affixed a dot in the center of the mirror, glued down the spider, sanded the focusing tube/masonite square connection and ordered then affixed a nice brass plaque with the donor's name and telescope info on Sidewalk Loaner #1.
Mojo and I used it used it a couple times, and it got a real trial Wednesday night at a school star party campout out on the beach at Tomales Bay in west Marin. Yesterday it was loaned out to a couple who currently observe with a Stellarvue 3-inch refractor, and who are considering the purchase of a reflector and wanted to try before they buy. After a collimation lesson at home and another one in the field, the scope was put to work, gave marvelous views, and the couple were happily hopping all over Mr. Messier's playfield.
The other interesting telescope was a battleship gray, rusted Criterion/Bausch and Lomb Dynamax 8 SCT. The nice guy from Crockett bought this scope on e-bay and has had alot of problems with it ever since. He said he filed a robbery report at the police station when he got it. :-) He also brought some 15 x 70 Oberwork binos with a mirror mount, which was fun to use and quite comfortable. Very nice views through it. He got them from bigbino.com. We all had alot of fun and I expect there will be a bigger crowd tonight enjoying better conditions.