4-30-05 Observing Report (Guerilla Astronomy)

by Andrew Pierce

You read that right, last Saturday night, 4-30-05. Like everyone else I figured it would be overcast and perhaps even rain that night. But it was a night that the rest of my family was going to a play without me, so I had to do something. Around 6:00 I checked the satellite pictures and saw a large clear area off the coast to the south of Monterey. So after dinner I decided to haed south with my gear to see if I could catch the sucker hole.

By the time I reached Gilroy there had been no glimmer of any opening in the clouds. But now I was committed so I pulled out a map and saw that State Route 25 was the most southerly road available -- 101 bends west at that point, which didn't look good. Eventually I made it as far south as Coalinga Road -- way past the road to Panoche pass. The sky still sucked. I decided to keep going south until 10:00 p.m.

At 10:00 I was nearing the Panoche pass exit. There were a few stars visible, but no constellations. I decided to turn around and check the sky every 10 minutes. 10 minutes later, at the entrance to a ranch on Route 25 I actually saw some sky. It looked clearer to the north so I kept driving to the Pinnacles exit. Lo and behold a nearly cloudless dark dark sky beckoned. I started down the road toward the eastern entrance to Pinnacles and found a very nice turnout close by the entrance.

The sucker hole lasted from about 10:15 to 12:45, long enough to get in two hours of observing after I located my spot and set up my 14.5 inch Teleport dob. Don't try this with a scope that takes an hour to set up. It stayed pretty clear with occasional clouds over small fractions of the sky. The lights of what I presume was Soledad were visible on the western horizon, but it was very dark everywhere else.

Some of the sights that nearly justified the whole ordeal were:

M51, with each spiral arm holding steady and distictly in direct vision.

M61, also with spiral arms.

M101, looking bright and spiral.

The bright globs M3, M13 and M92, resolved to the core and looking like the proverbial diamond dust on black velvet.

First time objects NGC 4303A (next to M61) and NGC 4030, a bright round galaxy in the middle of three brightish stars in Virgo.

Volunteer object NGC 4476, which is next to the galaxy (NGC 4478) which is next to M87.

The downtown Virgo and Markarian's chain area in a 30 mm GTO eyepiece, with countless galaxies, each with a distictive shape and personality.

M57 which showed a flash of central star. This object and Scorpius rising were reminders that April was turning to May (literally).

NGC 5148, dark lane and all.

M88, 65 and 66.

Got home at 2:40 or so. Would I do it again? Who knows? We don't have the benefit of hindsight when we start these crazy episodes of guerilla astronomy.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 02, 2005 15:21:22 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 20, 2005 11:29:47 PT