Saturday night at the Peak

by Jamie Dillon

Saturday night there was a set of observers scattered across Fremont Peak. As I mentioned Sunday, in the SW lot there were Alan Zaza, David Kingsley, Jim Everitt, a guy named Bernardo and a couple who were imaging (a real recipe for connubial bliss if ever I saw one). And we didn't even get the aperture award. There was a 25 and an 18 at Coulter.

The sky was really decent. Well past 6.0 LM thru most of the night, and seeing good to excellent, long stretches of excellent 5/5. In the first hour after sunset the darkness was stunning, with the cities covered by marine layer. Limiting magnitude was at least 6.8; we were looking at stars in Canis Major that weren't supposed to be there. A high haze came in and shifted the magnitude down about a whole notch, but not near enough to spoil the fun.

It was funny enough to see Kingsley, Everitt and myself spending a big chunk of the night doing planets. Jupiter was exciting, first with Ganymede's shadow exiting, then later Io's shadow transiting. Festoons along the equator, two white ovals under Io's shadow in the NEB, and a big oval earlier in the SEB. Saturn's disk had all kinds of splotches and bands. To my eye the south polar area continues to get less dark. Big excitement for me was seeing Hyperion for the first time, a moon I hadn't ever thought to see in my scope. That little distorted moon was visible about 30% of the time to averted vision. I could tell how much luck came into play as a function of excellent seeing, when David's fine 15" scope wouldn't show Hyperion a short time later.

(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians.)

And yes I got into a set of new galaxies, just south of Alphard, alpha Hya, a set of 6 starting with NGC 2855 and moving east. One of them was "discovered," a dim little thing near 2889 that wouldn't go away, sure enough 2884 on Uranometria. I was using SkyAtlas for the hops. Mr Tirion had plotted an IC and and MCG in that area, so I went after them and sure enough Felix pulled 'em in. M-2-25-6 is my third total MCG galaxy so far, a little dim kidney bean.

For dessert later I spent a long time staring at M3 and M5 and comparing views with Jim in his own 15, as well as M13. I just find globulars fascinating, of all shapes and sizes. The bull goose globulars sure are knockouts.

Good stars, superb company, great night.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Fri Mar 19 15:32:33 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Thu Jul 8 17:25:39 2004 PT