Coe 08/30/03

by Tony Hurtado

Well, it was a pretty good outing at Coe last night. The Coe winds were light early on, and they brought a slight chill with them. But the winds abated by ~9:30pm and an almost eerie calm warmness set in for most of the night to come with a single ~30 min. exception around 11pm. There was visible fog in the valleys to the west of Coe as well as to the southeast, but it never made it near enough to cause any problem with seeing or dew. What was a bit of a problem was the smoke haze from all of the nearby fires; it formed a rather thick layer of gunk that was REALLY obvious from the really red glow it imparted on the crescent moon at it was setting. Pretty, but gunky. Good thing it hugged the horizons as well as it did.

Overhead, the sky was gorgeous all night. A very distinct and feature laden Milky Way crossed the entire sky from Sag to Cas. Limiting magnitude as measured at 9:30pm (kinda early) was about 5.9, but the fog served to dim the lights effectively as it crept in.

We spent a good deal of time on Mars, naturally, which was a crowd pleaser for the very small number of customers we had, mostly campers with kids enjoying a warm night stroll from the campgrounds. Good detail was achieved after midnight as we sifted through my filter collection. Experimentation showed that the #80A light blue and #25 red were best; the #80A allowed for a brighter view, but, although much dimmer, the #25 gave good contrast between light and dark features. The red was a little tough to adapt to, but it was good! We also attempted to go right down to a 4mm lens (an amazing 508x) which showed the polar cap and associated dark ring, but the 6mm (at 339x) was the best.

Other memorable views were:

Ring Nebula - nice definition w/ almost clear middle area discernable - no central star though!
M28 - a smaller glob with some interesting detail in Sag
M45 - The Pleiades!! as it rose over the ENE hills - harbinger of the Winter

Such a nice night, and so few people - I definitely expected more TACos - just 4-5 scopes. Musta been at Freaky Peak. Wonder how that crew did?

N8i in Si Valley