Henri Coe 10/13/07

by Pete Santangeli

Like others, the moist conditions scared me away from Calstar this year. I had thought about going down for Saturday and maybe Sunday night, but the prospect of a damp field and its ensuing dew, and tearing down every night for fear of surprise rain dampened my enthusiasm.

But I was all geared up for observing and imaging, so I decided to do a Henry Coe night on Saturday. Saturday at 5 pm found me driving down south from clear-blue Los Gatos into the cloud bank that hung ominously above Coe. For a fleeting moment as I approached the East Dunne turnoff, I considered nailing the throttle and heading down to LSA for the night. If I had left at 4 instead of 5, I would probably have done it. I continued on to Coe though, and sure enough, by dark, we were pretty well socked in.

There were 5-10 of us in the parking lot waiting for clearing and dark. I'm terrible with names, but Bud Wittlin, Greg Laflamme, Dan, and a few others were amongst our number. There were also about 20 day-hiker cars almost filling the lot, which was unusual.

Fortunately for us all, Jim Bartolini made the astro sacrifice, and packed up and left. Within an hour, we had clearing skies. Thanks Jim!

Because of the weather, I had just set up my 16" Dob for visual, and the astro gear was still stowed in the truck. After an hour of looking at some brighter objects in the rapidly improving skies though, I figured "what the heck", and pulled out all the imaging gear. I was able to set up in the dark in about 20 minutes, which is pretty good for me.

As I imaged my first object though, a strange lack of light sensitivity caused me to abort and check my corrector - sure enough, covered in dew. In my rush I had neglected to install either a dew heater or a dew cap, and the corrector on my 10"SN was almost opaque.

I put on my Kendrick and pulled out my Orion "Portable Short Circuit and Battery Killer" (aka, the 12v hair dryer style dew remover) and was able to clear the corrector. The Kendrick kept it dry for the rest of the evening, despite my table being swimming in water.

I was set up next to Greg, who was busy looking at some interesting objects. He mentioned NGC6949, a nice big face-on spiral. I slewed to it with the imaging scope and was pleased to see that there was also a small open cluster in the field. If anyone knows what its ID is, I'd like to know, as I could not find it in The Sky. Check out the image link above to see it. I love double objects, so I set the imager off for 2.5 hours shooting it.

While that was humming along I used the Dob to look at some objects, and stole some views from others. Particularly notable were Uranus and Neptune in my scope, and Mars in the (giant) 16" F6 home made dob that was present (see... I've forgotten some names...)

I took a look at a few NGC's, some planetaries, and some old fav's like the Helix. The conditions were quite steady.

Once Orion came up, I decided to shoot an old friend... the flame and horsehead nebulas. I've shot them many times, but not with this OTA, and in some ways, shooting objects in Orion is like welcoming the winter season for me.

I was only able to grab about an hour and 10 minutes though before the clock struck 3am and it was time to start packing up. I arrived at home at 4am after a terrific night. Not quite a substitute for a clear and dry Calstar, but none the less, it did calm the photon cravings.

Pete