Coyote Lake 2007-09-15, a mouse among truss lions

by Christopher Hendrie

I observed from about 2000 to 0130. Seeing was fair. Darkness improved markedly towards midnight when clouds started to roll in from the west and north, dampening the light domes. It was an excellent opportunity for targets in the eastern sky. I used my 100ED refractor, which I suppose will need a cute name at some point to reflect (refract?) its mouse-among-truss-lions habitat.

I didn't have a concrete observing plan for the evening, just the intention of logging a decent number of new-to-me Messier objects and mooching a few large-aperture views. It turned out to be a great night for both goals. In my own telescope, I found and observed 18 new-to-me objects, including 16 new Messier objects. Later in the evening I fell into a simple rhythm using "The Next Step", systematically covering the area of sky around Cassiopeia and Perseus. The dark skies made it easy enough to find things that I didn't need to consult an atlas.

Some of the highlights in my own telescope:

- Barnard's Star, bubbling up between compelling fishhook and tropical fish asterisms. Kudos to Dave for suggesting I check it out.

- M76 for its well-defined dumbbell shape.

- M74 for the satisfying star hop to a non-obvious target.

- M8 w/ a UHC filter borrowed from Michael. Some objects didn't benefit much from the UHC, but M8 gained a lot of depth and dimension, and I could see the fainter extended part of the nebula much more clearly.

- 7789, finally (missed it at MB Tuesday): it's simply a lot smaller than I expected. Open clusters seem to trip me up when I don't have a good idea of their angular size.

- 6995, the brighter component of the Veil, no filter. Not a lot of detail, but it's there, and I get a kick out of the fact that I'm seeing it at all.

- Mars, huge and red and gibbous, rising through the boiling air in the east. Kudos to Dave again for interrupting my premature packing -- I'm glad I didn't miss it.

- M45 and Aldebaran. When I started observing with binoculars less than a year ago, these were some of my first celestial friends. A meteor added some pizazz to my 3-degree wide-field view of M45.

Highlights in other people's telescopes:
- Uranus and Neptune (Dave's big blue cannon), Neptune (Michael).
- The Veil w/ OIII filter (Dave). Whoa, filaments and tangles galore!
- M13 (Michael). It's full of stars!
- Albireo (Michael). So bright it almost burns my eyes; I never realized double-star observing could be hazardous. ;-)

I lost track of time so missed some good satellite opportunities, but we were graced with a few meteors. One particularly bright and smoke meteor may have qualified as a "fireball", but I'm not sure.

Thanks, and I hope to see many of you again soon. I'll be at CalStar; my love of observing has wrestled with my distaste for camping and has won decisively.

Regards,
Christopher