Lake San Antonio, Screech! Boom! crunch & thud-Run for cover!!!

Greg LaFlamme

I certainly can't write an OR with the clever and descriptive ability of Bill Cone, the whimsical nature of the great Marek or the "in your face fun" of Greg Claytor. Nope, can't do it:-( What I can do is tell you story about three scared amateur astronomers, all alone at Lone Rock. First, the sky... Steve Gottlieb and another long time observer/friend of his (Bob ? forgot his last name but a great guy anyway:-) and myself had a very nice night under unusually dark skys at Lake Sonoma. Observing with Steve is really great and very informative. I was learning even before the scopes were assembled! I continued working on the same list I've been on for a month and am almost finished with it! Most of these objects are on the tac eye candy list as well (great list by the way). Example, I slewed to "Kemble's cascade" but in my scope at 79x, there was only a couple stars but a quick look in my finder showed an almost "Pices-like" asterism of stars. Here where observing with Steve is really cool. He says, oh your looking at Kemble's? There is a nice planetary right near that asterism, ngc 1501:-) He moved his 18" Starmaster right to it and we began scrutinizing it at 450X. Beautiful object! Pushing our scopes well over 500X was easy and stars were, well, stellar. Great skys for what we do. SQM was 21.30!!! seeing was 8 outta 10 I'd say.

I learned so much in our short hour of observing, really, it was fantastic. He taught me (among other things) a relatively accurate way of discerning N. S. E. W. in the eyepiece to help me describe in my logs, what I saw. I've always nudged the scope around and based the objects direction on which way I was nudging. Not anymore, I use the drift method now. Thanks again Steve. Ok, great Greg, sounds like you had a nice time but why all the excitement in your title? Well, traffic on the road was very light, and the night was very quite. As Steve and I were talking about something, we could hear a vehicle in the distance racing up the road and the sound of tires loosing traction... The sound was getting closer and closer, followed by the sound of a large vehicle skidding off the road, plowing through brush and crunching everything in its path,,,, but still coming towards us... Bob was safe on across the lot from us but Steve and I ran to get behind his van. The large suv came to rest in the ditch on the downhill side of the lot entrance about 50 yards away .. Wheeew! If you go to Lone rock anytime soon, don't bother looking for the sign, its gone.

Standing there in the darkness, hearing all this mess is a bit scary and it snaps you into another mode instantly. Bob has a large red lantern/flashlight and together we walked over to the scene to find a man and woman arguing in Spanish.. They said they didn't need help and that they were ok. She tried to back out of the ditch but it was clear to us that a tow truck was needed. Bob called 911 and we continued to observe for another 45 minutes in that gorgeous sky before a highway patrolman finally arrived. (I'm cutting the story way short as the other details don't help it much;-) I showed the officer the comet in my scope and then pointed it out with my green light saber. Future amateur astronomer? maybe... About the time that the fully illuminated tow truck arrived, a wall of fog blasted across the parking lot, killing what was once a deep dark sky. Talk about a portable light dome, Cripes!! :-( We packed up slowly, discussing the LMC and other Southern sights that I would like to see one day. I mean, I'm going to have to go OZ one day, sounds too good. I was in bed by 11:30 but that 1.5 hours observing was time well spent!

GML

Observing Reports Observing Sites GSSP 2010, July 10 - 14
Frosty Acres Ranch
Adin, CA

OMG! Its full of stars.
Golden State Star Party
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