New Years' Observing

by Shneor Sherman

My wife, my 18" and I were invited to a New Years' Eve party in Esparto. I arrived at 8 p.m. to find the skies gloriously clear and transparent. I was set up by 9, the setup interspersed with occasional social pleasantries, and before anyone arrived to share the observing, I managed to get a nice view of Thor's Helmet using an OIII with my 30mm Widescan+paracorr. As I was observing Thor's Helmet, a couple of people arrived, one of whom is an occasional observer with a very rarely used 12.5". After sharing this relatively dim view, I began was was to become a recursive tour of the major sights of the evening - M42, Saturn (with M1 in the field) and Jupiter, with an occasional view of M81/82. I spent about an hour, from 10 to 11 or so repeating the view for various groups of people. Around 10:30, occasional bands of clouds crossed the sky from west to east, but did not seriously interfere with the viewing.

I had some excellent views with my new 9mm Pro-Optic Ultrawide. Cassini's Division was incredibly contrasty, and even those who observed for the first time saw it clearly, as well as a band across Saturn. The view of Jupiter was excellent, with several bands clearly visible to the most unobservant, as well as a moon crossing the disk. Some detail was visible in M1 as well.

A bit after 11, when the cold had driven the tourists in, I too left to join in the festivities.

I brought my 25x100s, but had neglected to bring the weight. One was imorovised using a partly filled bucket of honey, and though it was clumsy, it worked. M42 seems to have a larger nebulous area than is visible in my 18", with these. M81/82 looked great, and I believe I saw some spiral structure in M81. I had little time to work with these, however.

I returned to the telescope around 12:20, but there seemed to be high clouds everywhere. Nevertheless, I viewed a couple of trios in Leo, viewed a couple of objects with the 25x100s, but by 1 I saw the fog moving in. While my table and eyepiece case were drenched, my mirrors, secondary and eyepieces were untouched by dew. I packed up and left about 1:45.

While I did not get to see much, I heard lots of ooohs and aaahs from meny who had never looked through a telescope. One even looked to be sure I did not have a picture of Saturn somewhere in my telescope. It's the first observing I've done in about 2 months.

Esparto was rated by CSC as mag 6 skies the New Years' Eve, with poor to average seeing, and poor to opaque transparency. In fact, the skies were close to mag 6 overhead and to the southwest, transparency was 8/10 at best, and the seeing looked about 6/10 for most of the evening.