by Bob Czerwinski
It was a wonderful night at Fremont Peak. With fog down below pouring in from the coast, I probably arrived at the SW Lot about 45-minutes before sunset - didn't really pay much attention to the time - to find Alan Zaza already set up. It was probably Peter Natscher who was already set up over on Coulter Row as well; unfortunately I never made it over that way. Nobody else with astro-gear made the trip to the SW Lot, so once the sun had set and the last of the day's visitors departed, Alan and I had the place to ourselves. Well, pretty much so. Several times we were graced by the presence of a wandering group of three good-sized pigs, but they were only interested in checking out the garbage cans, not our vehicles or our gear. I have the feeling they made it over to Coulter as well. As we soon found out, the pigs have learned to open the garbage cans and pull out the plastic liners. The resident ranger also stopped by a couple of times, the last being a bit after sunset, letting us know he was dummy-locking the gate to the SW Lot. Very nice of him!
BTW, a vehicle roundabout has been constructed at the entrance to the park. It's pretty large, and really narrows down the road on both sides. I can't understand why this roundabout is the size it is; anybody with a large vehicle, camper or trailer is going to hate this thing. I'd really like to know what the responsible civil engineer was thinking.
I spent the night observing with my 12.5" f/5.0 Starmaster, using 17mm and 12mm Nagler eyepieces, and running TheSky on my laptop. We were fortunate to have the presence of fog along the coast, along with excellent seeing and transparency conditions. M13 was easy with averted vision, but I'm not certain I could hold it with direct. As soon as my eyes would move, there it was, so I can't confirm that I held it directly. The normal inversion occurred, and temperatures were relatively mild, although I did wear my "blue fuzzy" light jacket and a head-cover throughout the evening. As expected, the only SW Lot light-domes came from the NW (the Bay Area) and the SW (Salinas); the fog never came in enough to cover these areas. My goal was to try and hit several galaxies in Leo Minor, pretty far to the west, and then to work some other H400-I/II items, mostly open clusters. I knew it wouldn't be too late night for me, but I was looking forward to the evening.
It wasn't long before Alan noted that the fog resembled a very dark blanket, pulled up over the coast. For me, the fog was a real blessing. I had to wait a bit of time to spot Alpha-Lynx, as my first target, the furthest to the west, was NGC 2859, an H400-I object in Leo Minor, less that a degree from this star. I finally located the star in my 'scope, along with a couple of others nearby. Now this is where TheSky software is a lifesaver. I rotated TheSky's field of view to match my eyepiece view, moved TheSky to 2859's position, did an easy 'scope star-hop to 2859's field as shown in TheSky ... and then just waited for the sky to darken more. Without knowing *exactly* where to look, I'd have wasted quite a bit of valuable time. Eventually 2859's bright core was just visible with averted vision, offset from a couple of 7th magnitude stars in Leo Minor. I'd guess that 2859 was probably 25-degrees above the horizon. Once confirmed, I went after 3158, 3254, 3424 and 3430, all H400-II objects, using similar techniques. 3158 had two other galaxies very faintly visible in the same field, 3159 and 3163. TheSky indicated 3161 was between these two, but I couldn't confirm it was really there. 3424 and 3430 formed a nice pairing, about 6-arcmins away from one another. 3413 also sits in the same field as the 3424/3430 pair, but was much tougher to see.
I was really pleased with hitting these items. I thought LMi was too far to the west for a go, so I was a bit giddy after nailing the five galaxies I was after, and was able to log a couple more in LMi as well.
The rest of the night was spent in a hodge-podge of areas, and I officially logged another dozen items or so. Comet C/2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang is still around, and I spotted it in Serpens, about 3-degrees south M5. Just a shade of its former self, but not too difficult to find. Finished up with some eye-candy items, and then started to pack up my gear a bit before 1:00am. Alan and I both departed the SW lot around 2:00am. I had the top down on my Jeep, and the brisk air definitely kept me awake on the way home to San Jose.
Hope all of you who ventured out last night had a great evening.