Coyote Lake, 6/3/2006

by Marek Cichanski

I hadn't been to Coyote in forever, so I headed down for the star party last night. Unlike previous ranger-sponsored star parties, this one was held at the boat ramp, where we normally do our observing. It seemed to me that it worked out pretty well. I can't remember everyone who brought a scope, but someone told me at one point that there were 18 scopes present. I enjoyed the pleasant feeling of having a large paved area on which to set up, unlike my usual adventures on the gravel lot at Montebello. I'd forgotten how nice that is.

For my own part, I wanted to test a Denk II on my 18" Obsession, and I was pleased to see that it came to focus just fine. The initial view of the Moon through the 24 Panoptics was quite a pleasant result. Since I had a non-driven scope, I mostly looked at bright DSOs during the star party, instead of the Moon. I had a fair number of people come by and look through the Mobsession, and it was gratifying to have a good star party session after the somewhat early cloud-out of the night before.

I'd been looking at the sat loop all day, and it was clear that some bands of cirrus were going to sweep over us during the first part of the night. They did, but it wasn't enough to ruin the night. As I expected, it got substantially clearer after midnight, and there were very few clouds after moonset. Seeing varied during the night, with some nice views of Jupiter and a shadow transit during the first part of the night, but I thought it got softer later on. Post-moonset, the SQM was reading about 20.3.

Most people were gone by moonset, but a few of us diehards ended up staying the whole night. I surprised myself by being the last one out at 5 am. Haven't done that in forever! I couldn't help it, though, as I just wanted one good dose of big-scope dark-sky observing before the bright moon really sets in. As with most of my sessions this year, I didn't log anything, I just enjoyed bopping around on Deep Map 600. Matt Marcus and I observed a number of planetaries, including the Saturn Nebula, the Egg Nebula and the Cat's Eye. I think that Matt racked up a fairly substantial body count among the planetaries. I enjoyed a few fall objects, such as M2, M30, M31, NGC7331, and the Double Cluster. Couldn't quite pick out Stephan's Quintet, though.

By 4 am Matt and I noticed that there was some lightening in the eastern sky, and the birds were starting to chirp. Matt pulled out shortly before me, and I enjoyed a very nice, peaceful pack-up in the early predawn light. I left right at 5, with the eastern sky a faintly glowing blue, and Venus as my muse.

My best through-the-scope memories of the night were the big globular clusters as seen through the Denk II with 9mm t6 Naglers. It was just as I'd remembered it when I'd borrowed Michael Swartz's binoviewer at MB recently. A totally different observing experience than I'd ever had in cyclops mode. Simply sublime.

Now for the purging, cleansing fire of the bright moon cycle, and then it's on to Shingletown and such.

Marek Cichanskim