The Peak again

by Richard Navarrete

I had a short night at the Peak. I left at midnight because I had to help my daughter move to a new apartment in Davis on Monday morning. I brought my 10" Hardin dob instead of the 18" Obsession and worked from paper charts instead of the computer. I wanted to be able to pack up quickly and maximize the observing time. Some of my friends may need to brace themselves, my observing session was entirely made up of double stars and........open clusters! :-)

Before I left for the Peak I downloaded and printed the Astronomical Leagues double star list, and I brought the October 2002 Sky and Telescope magazine which included an article by our own Jay Reynolds Freeman on open clusters in Casseopeia.

I observed and split about a dozen doubles. Some were very easy and split in the finder scope. A few needed the 4.8 Nagler (yes, the seeing was good enough to support this high magnification. Rashad was over 500x on 'the magic carpet' nebula.) Epsilon Bootes was a tough split. This will be a fun list to work through.

I had previously observed the opens listed in the article, but it was fun re-visiting them and reading Jay's comments.

A fun night at the Peak.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 06, 2005 11:44:05 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 11, 2006 19:06:13 PT