Coe Sat Night

by Alan Zaza

I decided to go to Henry Coe instead of the Peak Saturday the 21st just to try out my new Oberwerk 22X100s. It was a perfect night with a very transparent dark sky, and it was very calm and dry. I bought the Universal Astronomics heavy duty parallelogram mount and Oberwerk surveyors tripod to support the binos so I could observe comfortably relaxed in a lawn chair. I must say this combo can't be beat. It brings a whole new dimension to observing.

I started my observing by taking a very long look at Comet Swan in Bootes. It was a huge glowing fuzzy grayish ball with no hint of any tail. The view was gorgeous with the comet seemingly suspended in front of a beautiful star field. This is what I love about the binos; the apparent field is around 65 degrees and the true field just under 3 degrees of sky. So the views give a good perspective around the objects your looking at. Next I decided to look at the Sagittarius area and just cruse around a bit while lying down in the lawn chair; I did that for about a half hour observing the numerous clusters and dark nebulae. The Wild Duck cluster was even resolved with averted vision. For the rest of the night until midnight, I observed most of all the open clusters in Cassiopeia and Perseus. Grimly was playing some jazz and surf music in the background which I enjoyed very much. It was a great night at Coe.

Alan Zaza

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