by George Feliz
I took my homemade, lightweight 6", f/6 Dob (Dobby) to work on the Karkoschka book, and my TV85 to work off some of the Messiers that aren't easy from home. The weather was clear and mild with a sweatshirt sufficing for most of the night. The seeing ranged from good to excellent (more later). I dragged myself away around midnight, but there were several die hards still there.
We started out with a naked eye view of 6 planets just after sunset. Mercury was a few degrees above a hill, but still pretty easy. Mars, Venus (about half a disc), Saturn and Jupiter were easy, as was the planet between the feet. ;-)
As we often do, there was a lotta socializing and as the sky darkened we looked at doubles to check the seeing. Rigel was easy, but the first hint that it could be a good night was when Joe Bob said that 6 stars in the Trapezium were rock-solid. His 10" CPT is a collapsible Dob with an outstanding Royce mirror, and his views often set the standard for the mid-size scopes.
With Dobby, at 180x E was steady, but F was sighted about 50% of the time. Fine results for early in the session.
Through the night, the gas giants gave us excellent views with lots of detail on Saturn (including 5 moons for Dobby), a "double" moon setup on Jupiter with lots of band details and an appearance by the pale spot formerly known as Great Red. I limited my planetary views to save my dark adaptation (especially with Jupiter near opposition). There were many oohs and aahs from those who viewed the planets from MB last night.
With all my gabbing and shared views, Dobby did not progress too much on the Karkoschka lists. Some highlights:
2362 - (seen before) looked at the fine double Tau CMa at the center 1535 - PN in Eri, too low from my backyard 1788 - very dim reflection nebula - need darker skies M35+companion OC with a satellite buzzing through 2539 - medium rich OC in Pup 2237 - Rosette neb. with 24Pan and Ultrablock, incl. OC 2244 M46+M47+2438 (PN) + 2423 OC 3115 - fairly bright edge-on glxy in Sex 3242 - "Ghost of Jupiter" PN, big and bright, bluish, also saw in 11" SCT (thanks Dennis)
Targets missed, mostly due to light pollution (and possible operator error), included 2024, 2175 (seen before), 2324, 1360 (which had just set when I looked for it).
For a a change of pace (some widefield views, and Messier hunting) I switched to the TV85:
Off to Leo and M95/96/105/NGC3384 all in 24Pan and better individual views with the 11T6. Also in 1 FOV were M65/66/NGC3628. The nice contrast of the little scope made these views possible.
Zooming northeast (not the best part of the sky at MB) I was surprised how relatively easy M109 was - it was much harder for my 70mm refractor. M108 and M97 were even easier and were in the same field.
I then picked off M94, 63, 106, 101 (a good catch because of low surface brightness and the Silicon Valley light dome, easy under dark skies), 102, 68, 64, 83. This left only the Virgo cluster section of the list (about 17 left) to finish my 7th Messier tour, but I was too tired to finish. I know, what a wimp...
I put away the TV85 and then spent a bit of time wandering around and taking more casual looks through Dobby. About half the crew had left - jobs or something the next morning...
I got some more nice views of Saturn and Jupiter, the M46/47 region again, M104 with the dust lane visible, M3 and M13 (still pretty low) for some eye candy. I also checked out M3 and M67 in Peter's 15" Dob for some mondo-photons.
The tightest view of the night was from Joe Bob' when he was able to split Gamma Vir (Porrima), now about 0.8". He was at ~500x, and one had to nudge the scope a bit to keep it in the field of view, but it was a good split. That was the second night of sub-arcsecond seeing up there for me.
I was beat, but upbeat after all this rain, and my first, non-backyard session of the year. I really appreciated being out with good company on a fine night. Thanks.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Thu Mar 18 11:07:08 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Wed Jul 7 23:24:41 2004 PT