FP 9-15-07

by Alan Zaza

It was over a year since I was at the peak so decided to go there and play with my new XT10i. Arriving at 6:30 to an empty upper lot which stayed empty until Jamie Dillon, James Turley, and another TACo (sorry forgot the name) dropped in to say hello. That was a nice visit. There was a moderate wind and it was cold until about 9:30 and then it warmed up and the wind stopped. Seeing was very soft. There was no fog covering the city lights, so it didn't get that dark.

I've never had an object locator before so got a chance to what it was all about. It worked very well; I finally found Stephan's Quintet and would never have found it by star hopping as I tried several times before to find it. Couldn't do it even with my 12". I could defenitly see a patch of "something" with averted vision. Maybe 3 or 4 somethings that were barely perceptable. Very cool! Punching in the numbers, I observed many small galaxies in Pegasus with 7217, and 7814 standing out. In Andromeda, the highlight was 892, big and ominous and flying saucer shaped. In Cygnus, I observed many tiny open clusters from Sue French's columns in Sky&Tel. What would we do without Sue?

I decided having an Object locator is nice, but something was missing; it seemed boring. So back to star hopping I went and then I had fun! I found the OC NGC 6811 in Cygnus, which is a bright cluster, and I noticed another dimmer OC right next to it which is richer in faint stars. This is Lorenzin NGC 6811 according to The Sky. Are both of these 6811? I can't seem to find much more on these two.

I had a pretty good time and left at 1:30. I thought about Coe, I hope the overflow lot will be open soon!

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