MARS! Sunday night at Chabot

by Michael Swartz

I decided to do a little public service and tow my astro-trailer up to Chabot this past Sunday night (10/30). I set up my Plettstone 18" outside on the patio area between the two big domes which house the beautiful antique refractors that adorn the top of that mountain. Next to them was of course the new 36" cassegrain which I imagined would look pretty cool if they could just make it blink. And sharing the patio with me was an odd assortment of volunteers and telescopes of varying apertures and types. My Plettstone was in very good company.

I set up just before sunset and then waited until 8:00pm when the public viewing began. There were bands of clouds and an occasional thick patch that moved across the sky through out the night. There were always enough clear dark areas to allow viewing of something interesting as we waited for Mars to get high enough to really be worth looking at. Around 10:00pm or so it was high and in an area that was clear and dark. So I put the binoviewer into that wonderful feathertouch focuser and aimed my Plettstone at Mars. Wow! What site it was! I think it was the best view I have ever had of mars. I had it tracking on it with a pair of 9mm's that put the mag at about 250x. That certainly is not a record by any means but it was a very nice size in the binoviewer. The contast and color were wonderful. I had maybe 60 or 70 people visit my scope and enjoy that view. Many of them commented that it was the best view on the hill. I can't say personally because I was pretty much confined to crowd control at my scope and never got to look through the other scopes there. In any case it was great fun to share the view with some really appreciative people on a somewhat historic night in the shadows of some pretty historic observatories and a few pretty historic observers too.

I hung around till after the party was over and took an opportunity to spend about 20 minutes gazing at the Orion nebula. It has been since Calstar since I last saw it. It is truly awesome. And in my scope I see red and green in it too. All that wonderful structure, the deep, inky black dust clouds, subtle shades of red in the outer smokey grey regions and just a hint of green in the brighter white filaments. I don't know if it was my eyepieces, my imagination, or if the color was really there but whether actual or imagined.. it was beautiful.

I really love this hobby.

Looking forward to observing with you all again soon.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Oct 31, 2005 22:40:13 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 15, 2006 20:03:45 PT