Monte Bello Sat 17 June 2006

by Pentti Kanerva

The sky was good--I don't know how to put a number on it--and I could see as well as I ever have up there (have never been to MB when the valley is fogged over). By 11pm the Milky Way was clearly visible and I could see all four stars of Little Dipper's bowl (the dimmest is mag 5). Not a drop of dew and hardly any wind.

Mercury, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and the Omega globular in Centaurus were obvious early targets. And yes, I saw the Space Station passing Jupiter and then tracked it with the scope at 38x but saw no detail.

I came without a specific list for the night, just wanted to get better at finding and seeing galaxies in Messier's list. It would be fun to do the entire list without charts. The Great Bear is now tamed, but the Virgo cluster will take more work. I barely see some of them (M98, M100) with my 5" Mak so need to become very familiar with the skyscape.

The asteroid (10) Hygiea in Sagittarius at mag. 9.8 was my "new" object of the night. I also found out that I can see stars to 13th magnitude by going to 200x.

The moon had come up so I made one last test, why not: looked at it through the scope, up and down the terminator a few times, then looked at the Milky Ways, naked eye, covering alternately the left and the right eye. The spared left still saw it fine but for the right eye the milk was gone. Time to pack.

I left the parking lot at 2am and saw four deer on the way down. The temperature at MB was a pleasant 64 (that's 291 degreed Kelvin, and at the bottom of the hill it was 284 Kelvin for a 7-degree drop in 500 meters; creative extrapolation gives -22000 degrees Kelvin for the center of the earth).

Have a great time in Shingletown. I'll watch the satellite weather for you.

Pentti