by David Kingsley
Marek and I were the only observers last night at Montebello. Nice warm night, temperatures never below about 70 degrees, 23% humidity. WInd came up a bit between about 10 pm and midnight. Enough to jiggle the scopes and flip open pages of an observing atlas., but not enough to be really bothersome. There were the usual light domes to East and North West. But the Milky Way had obvious structure, and I like the clear unobstructed horizons to the south up at Montebello. I packed up about 1:15 am, and Marek was planning to leave soon after.
I continued to work on a globular cluster observing project that I started last Friday night at Henry Coe. I downloaded a list of all known globular clusters associated with the MIlky Way (see http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/supp/mw_gc.html)
There are a total of about 150 Milky Way globulars, including some visible only from the southern hemisphere. I found working through this list to be a great project for the usual Bay Area sites: most objects are bright enough to look good in local semi-dark skies; there is a huge variety of sizes, concentrations, magnitudes and character to the different globulars; a high percentage of the objects are truly spectacular, even the objects that aren't on the Messier list; and a fair number of the objects are also hard enough to pose a real challenge (including some that I don't think I will be able to see with a 14.5 inch scope until I'm out again under Lassen-quality skies).
You can also spice up the list with additional side projects. Friday night at Coe I tracked down the small planetary Pease 1 in M15, using the very useful finder charts available at http://www.blackskies.com/peasefc.htm. It was lots of fun star hopping WITHIN a beautiful globular cluster. Pease 1 was right where it was supposed to be, and stayed bright when the rest of the cluster dimmed with a UHC filter.
I observed about 65 of the Milky Way globulars over the Labor Day weekend, first at Coe on Friday, then at Coyote Park on Saturday, and last night at Montebello. It would have been better to start this project in June, given the concentration of globs in the Scorpio, Sagitarrius region. But it has still made a very enjoyable end of summer project, saying goodbye to all those wonderful clusters that sprinkle the summer sky towards the core of our own galaxy. A smattering of globs are left for the rest of the year, and I will return to the list again next summer to track down some of the harder objects on this great observing list.