by Doug Wolf
Went to Montebello for the first time on Tuesday night and was lucky enough to run into Bob Jardine and another fine gent named John, and they were kind enough to let me tag along on their permit for the evening.
Seeing was so-so, but there were targets a-plenty. Michelle and I managed some decent views of M27 (which responds *very* nicely to a Lumicon UHC filter), the ever-popular NGC-253 near-edge on spiral galaxy in Sculptor, the nearby NGC-288 which is a BEAUTIFUL (but *faint*) globular. This glob is kind of special in that the core doesn't seem to be overly dense, resulting in the abililty to resolve quite a few stars. We also wandered to M92 in Hercules and John and I spent a bit of time trying to optically chase down the Veil Nebula. This is *FAINT!* Managed to find a few whisps with the help of the UHC filter, but plan to try again from a darker site.
Bob & John, I wanted to thank you both again for helping me finally compare my optics to other scopes. Bob, the Takahashi 5-mil eyepiece is *wonderful* and I plan on getting one.
I'll definitely be making more mid-week appearences at MB. Can't beat it for a 1/2 hour mid-week drive!