by Shneor Sherman
Conditions -
| Transparency | 4/5 (early) to 3/5 after 11:30 |
|---|---|
| Seeing | gneerally 4/5 |
Mix Canyon Road, on the way to Blue Ridge, has a sign that says "one-lane road". Thsi si mostly tue, and I had to drive often in first gear on thiw twisty and steep, but paved road. Further on, Blue Ridge road is a dirt road, also steep and twisty. I found a suitable site, a turnout opposite a driveway, by a road sign that said "6.9".
I set up hopefully. The horizons almoat everywhere have the lower 1--15 degrees obscured, but that's still better for example than Plettstone. At dusk, I had a nice view of a very thin sliver of a crescent moon (which I shared - more on this later), Venus, Jupiter and then a nice view of Hickson 68 at about 9:40 p.m. All 5 galaxies were visible.
I kept on waiting for it to get dark, then finally realized it was not going to get any darker. Blue Ridge is in the yellow at best. The skies at Esparto are noticeably better, and Fiddletown is far superior. The Milky Way was but a pale shadow and disappeared on the way to Cassiopeia. Thios is not a site I would waste any time on. There was also traffic on the dirt road as late as 1:15 a.m. - not only cars, but ATVs.
I any case, I tried to make the best of it. I had nice view of several Messiers in Sag, although contrast was poor even with a filter. Globulars looked best - M22, later M13, and others. Early on, the Veil llacked detail as a result of low contrast, but I had a goob view with a binoviewer when it was at the zenith, and it appeared that strands were visible in the eastern loop. I also had a few good views of M76 at a bit over 300x (seeing was very good over most of the sky). I did have a veyr good view of the Helix in the binoviewer, I have to check this out again with good skies.
Also vieweed a number of the usual suspects - M51, M57, M109, M31/32/110, and Mars (polar cap visible, nogthing else).
I gave up on the sky about 1:30 because clouds had occasionally been scudding across since 11:15 and thw wind was occasionally quite gusty.
This is not a site I would return to.
Just before dusk, a car stopped and a man got out. Turns out he is an amateur from Napa who does imaging with a 5" refractor and has a 10" newt. His name is John, and he has a friend uy the road who had acreage. He wanted to bring his telescope, but was concerned about the wind at that site. He told me that he had access to dark skies in Napa on non=-public property but that it was often fogged out in the winter. I told him about tac-sac. \
On the way home, I took the back road rather than 80, and as I passed Gregg Blandin's house, I remembered that he had told me years ago that the Blue Ridge site was pretty light polluted.
Posted on tac-sac Aug 07, 2005 12:16:35 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 07, 2006 17:43:42 PT