Henry Coe S.P. Sunday Night, 5/28/06

by Peter Natscher

Last night at Henry Coe S.P., I had a great time observing from the overflow parking lot along with 10-12 others. I hadn't observed there for nearly two years and was glad to have made it back. It was good to have seen Bruce Jensen again after not seeing him for two years. When I arrived at 5pm. most of the lot was fully parked out with vehicles left by the park's campers and backpackers. The vehicles remained parked there throughout the night. All of us had to set up in and around the parked cars. I was lucky to have found an opening at the bottom of the lot away from the SJ lights.

This was the second outing for my new 18" Starmaster and the seeing was worth while for this aperture. During my 3 hours of observing, I fully logged, described, and carefully sketched ten new HII's to add to my growing Herschel II binder. These galaxies were all located in the constellation of Bootes and were in the mag. 12.5-13.8 brightness range. The wind that was blowing dust accross the parking lot during the afternoon was mostly settled down by 9pm to a light breeze that continued through the rest of the evening. The temperature held in the low fifties with a low RH. Dressing warmly with many layers was key to enjoying the evening. It felt like winter was back. I'm surprised at how cold is was for this time of year. Transparency was superb as a new cold air mass pushed across central California yesterday. The HII objects on my list (all fine mag. 12-14 galaxies) were showing up with good detail and the field stars amongst them in my scope's fov at 250X were very sharp. Finding them manually with my 8x50 finder and 27 Panoptic was fairly easy due to the good trasparency. Seeing was ok affording occassionally decent views of Jupiter. The jetstream was still overhead, though blurring views now and then. Doubles were splittable at 1 arc-sec, the double-doulbe Epsilon Lyrae was split at 75X and the central star of M57 was noticeable. It was agood night enjoyed by all.

I packed up and left by 1 am.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 29, 2006 11:07:16 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Jul 19, 2006 11:41:58 PT

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