mooching at CalStar

by Jamie Dillon

Saturday night Charlie Wicks took me over and introduced me to Kent Wallace, whose stuff I'd read for years. Unassuming guy, lives in Atascadero, always comes to CalStar. The pre-eminent planetary nebula observer, period. Kent has made a serious contribution to the literature, esp with cleaning up of catalogues. Real science, 'ay?

Kent was looking at ngc 246 in Cetus at the time, a favorite in my 11. He has a big boy 20" Dobs. That PN had shells and swirls for days in the 20. We looked at 253 in Sculptor, a knockout at any speed. Then Kent brought out Jones 1, which I'd never seen. It was pretty, like a long parenthesis, two graceful arcs facing each other.

Then Kent and Lord Alsing and I went on about favorite Darwin award myths.

My favorite new find in Felix was ngc 6629 in Sagittarius, a bright little round PN with a central star that dominated the very center.

The Bracewells and Carl and Jeff C and Pete were excellent observing neighbors. It was big fun seeing Jay Critchfield getting his sea legs. If I try and list who was fun to spend time with, I'll miss somebody.

The laughter, the comradeship, the eating and drinking, the jokes, were all just great. Talking about sci-fi, Turley going on about Jadzia Dax; Rashad and I each realizing the other was a big Rocky Jones Space Ranger fan when we were little. Saturday night I really didn't need to get loaded at 0230, but several folks of good judgement did. Their banter and chuckling made for soothing music as I fell asleep in my tent. So many of my favorite humans were on that baseball field.

This is us.

DDK