Peak Saturday night

by Jamie Dillon

The company was superb. There were scopes all over the mountain. Alan Zaza, the man who doesn't need a nickname, was by himself in the SW lot, as he mentioned, with his new Orion souped-up 10". At Coulter were the aforementioned Lou, with The Shadow and a guy named Mike. At Ranger Row were Turley Hissef, and Crilly, Natscher, Cichanski and Cooper. There were people I didn't know with scopes on the pads as well, along with Dr Kingsley.

I spent just about the whole time watching the stars wheel. Hey, it was absorbing! Sat and soaked up the starfields in Aquarius, moving down from Pegasus and into Pisces Austrinus. Did study the big Messier globulars, M15, M2 and M30. Kingsley, while staring at M30, called it the Sputnik Cluster, which I hadn't heard. No kidding, those tendrils could be two radio antennas.

One new object to keep the rule. NGC 1122 in Perseus showed a dim uniform oval mostly to averted vision. Turns out according to SkyAtlas Companion to be around 160 million lightyears away, so it gets to be dim. This was in Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians.

We yakked and bantered plenty. It'd been a while since Turley the Grand Nagus had blessed the Peak with his presence; we always have a big time. Marek was at one point being all industrious, took a ribbing from James, came back in milliseconds with "Fiat lux." That boy's quick.

DDK