Observing on Saturday

by William Blakeslee

Tonight I drove up to IHOP-2. It was a nice drive as the sun dropped into the west, and twilight was arriving as I made the left from 50 on Ice House Road. There had been small patches of snow along 50 where the plows had once left piles, but there was no accumulation on the ground. I went up the road still noticing some small areas where the occasional shady patch had preserved a little snow, but the road was clear and dry so I headed up the hill. Soon I was making the left on Peavine Ridge and continued down to the site. The only snow visible was small roadside patches clinging on for dear life in face of this past week's heat wave.

When I got to the observing area, I was startled to see a pick-up truck out in the open area. Thinking someone might be observing, I doused my lights and continued in. From a safe distance, I shouted to attract attention to myself, but no answer came back. I then proceeded to turn my headlights back on to find an old bashed up pick-up which was missing a lot of parts. I got out and checked it over. It was duely labeled with a sticker from the El Dorado County Sherriff's office which was not quite legible. Finding no one nearby, I started to check out the location. The vast majority of the ground is dry and solid to walk or drive on. There were two small areas which lay a little lower and held small puddles.

Having come dressed only in sweats and my coat still lying on the passenger seat, it was a pleasant surprise to not be cold.

Much of the sky wascovered with high thin clouds, but there were promising glimpses of stars. Venus was quite visible through a cloud, so I decided to wait a while and see what developed. It wasn't long before the clouds began to clear, and by 7:30 it was clear and quite dark, and steady.

I was able to see stars of magnitude 5 easily, but had to strain to imagine 6th magnitude. It wasn't even 8:00 yet, so possibly, the LVM improved later. I got out my trusty 20X80 Oberwerks and had a little look around. I can promise any of you with Messier Marathon plans a hard time with anything in the vicinity of Venus. Holy Cow is it bright!

After a while, I had seen a few of my faves and dwelled an appropriately long time on M42, so I decided to head back here to Placerville and get this posted tonight. Never did put my coat on.

Conditions at IHOP-2 are vastly better than I expected with the exception of the Pick-up (a wreck!) and the two small puddles which can be avoided, unless the observing group is very large. Another plus, perhaps of the season, and the weeknight, was that I never saw another occupied vehicle the whole time.

Posted on tac-sac Thu Mar 11 21:23:35 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Wed Jul 7 22:30:07 2004 PT