by Craig Scull
Elena and I took our first trip to Coyote. It was a pleasing 45min ride from downtown San Jose. Here are some selective highlights.
A pretty constant wind was blowing so we set up our 4" refractor near the trees in the south side of the lot.
The seeing was some of the fastest I can remember, with really rapid boiling. Venus was still interesting, but we couldn't go over 100x. Elena found an interesting double-walled crater near the terminator of the moon.
Viewed some double stars from the Astronomy League's double star certificate list. The sky was relatively dark given the enormity of the moon-- mag 5 stars were visible with averted vision when I put the moon at my back.
Elena did some of her usual sweeping, and at 26x (19mm televue wide field) she "discovered" a double star whose members were equally bright (~11th mag) that was in the same field as another double star. What follows is an interesting tag-team of events.
I take a look and say "Wow, pretty, and there's not just 2 double stars in the field, there's 5!"
Elena takes a look and says "No, wait a second, there's actually 6 double stars in the field."
I take a look and sure enough she's right. I think this is pretty amazing, so I get a pencil from the car and start to note the position in my Norton Sky Atlas. While I'm doing this I notice that the Planetary Nebula 6826 is nearby. About this time Elena says "I found a flat looking star, what do you think this is? A nebula?"
I figure it's the planetary, I take a look and sure enough this is it. I bump up the power 71x (7mm Nagler) and the view is really nice, with the planetary small, but showing bright and clear with a nice contrasty background.
I look up 6826 in the Deep Sky Observer's guide and silently read "alteration between direct and averted vision of planetary's nucleus causes the nebula to blink."
I'm about to tell Elena of this when she starts to tell me "there's something really weird here, the planetary is fading out to only a star and then it comes back in view again when you look away from it."
A few minutes later a car parks on the other end of the lot and a fellow comes by to ask us what we're looking at. We show him M31, the double cluster, and the blinking planetary. He's a very enthusiastic Hobbie Cat sailer/racer, incredibly worldly, and we talk for the next 3.5 hours until at 2am damp air settles in and the setting moon starts to be eclipsed by blowing fog clouds.
I guess you had to be there, but it was a blast.