Lake Sonoma Sat 25 April 2004

by Matthew Marcus

I finally got back to my favorite site, Lake Sonoma, and it didn't disappoint. The weather was clear, mostly still, and very warm. A light jacket was all that was needed, and it was not always needed. The horse people at the upper part of Lone Rock said that some SJAA people were doing something, possibly involving taking pictures, at someplace called Liberty Flat. Was that the Imager's Ball?

There was only one other party with me, consisting of Colin and a Russian friend of his (Stass (sp?)) and someone else whose name I forget. We had fun trading views of planets and the moon until it got as dark as the moon would let it.

After getting my fill of the planets, I dove into NSOG Chart 64-8, which shows Downtown Virgo in detail. Galaxies are plotted as ellipses, either open or crossed. The crossed ones are the ones not discussed in the book, except for a table. Remarkably, I could find every one of the open ones and none of the crossed ones I tried for. It's odd that the discrimination should be so sharp and centered around the capabilities of me and my C8. Anyone who hasn't done this trip or something comparable has missed quite an experience. You often get 2-4 galaxies in the EP at a time. I did the whole thing at 125x without ever having to switch to lower power.

After having gone through the whole chart, I realized that I had found a good way to locate galaxies I could see but hadn't logged. I logged three of these, ranging in mags from 10.8 to 12.5.

Unfortunately, I had to get back early because I needed to be up and present elsewhere at 0900, so I left at 0030, just as the moon was sinking behind the trees. In two weeks, I'll be back for third quarter!

Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 26, 2004 13:33:19 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 19:39:04 PT