Stickman 2

by Greg Parker

The clear sky clocks offered promise for an early Saturday morning session, but unfortunately this time Cupertino was less like San Jose's clock (good after 2 am) and more like Montebello (mixed until after dawn). Since I had new toys to play with, merely being able to see Orion was good enough so I headed out anyway.

The fog was creeping in from the north as I set up, so I pointed straight at the easy targets. First was Saturn, which I hadn't seen magnified in years. Its outline was surprisingly clear, much more so than the boiling Jupiter of recent evenings. That might have been an equipment change, though, with a different telescope and different eyepieces. The yellowish color and flat featureless appearance made it look like a sticker on the wall. I was happy to catch Titan and a blinking Rhea for the first time.

Next, I tested my new eyepieces on Trapezium. The Naglers showed a reasonably sharp quadruple with careful focusing, while my old similar-length Sirius Plossls presented bits of frosted glass through a keyhole at best. I was not expecting such a large quality difference.

Finally, I took a stab at the Double Cluster. It looked terrible in the thickening fog (hmm, need more money). But I did get to see a big bright stickman of Stock 2. The fog blotted out everything else around; I couldn't miss it! It helped that I had read a description of the cluster in S&T not two hours before, while waiting for the clouds to clear. If conditions had been "better" or earlier, I would have been out of luck.

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Greg Parker