What a crew at Coe

by Jamie Dillon

The country on the way up to Coe is as green as I've ever seen it. Looks like spring is really coming in. There was a bumptious crowd of telescopes and binoculars and people at Coe ready to go. Zaza, the Man Who Doesn't Need a Nickname, brought a buddy, as did Denis Lefebvre. Count in Tony Hurtado, Greg LaFlamme, Andy Pierce, Kevin Zahnle, Wags, Rashad, the Beastmaster, Rich Napo, Rob Hawley, Peters Natscher and Santangeli, Mark Johnston. If I missed you please just slap me next time we meet. There were several people I didn't know as well, to be sure. Some assemblage.

We saw Mira, a star that didn't belong in Cetus, enough to throw orientation off. As the Animal mentioned, it was in fact around 2nd magnitude. Cool! The zodiacal light was bright, heading into the Pleiades. And that meteor was amazing, went across more than 40° of sky, broke into two big pieces with long bright trails. Zaza's pal said he saw one chunk break into 3 pieces just before it winked out.

Saturn had a half hour of really sharp seeing, around 9:30. Cloud bands, the Cassini division were all distinct. I could catch glimpses of the Encke gap about 10% of the time. Zaza has a new Meade 12" Lightbridge that was showing off its paces. Real crisp views of Saturn at 300x.

I've apparently gotten into a study of winter Milky Way galactic clusters. Last night I stayed in Canis Major, again running down opens, most of them from DeepMap, what Rashad has started calling The Animal 600. That's a propos. The prettiest and most interesting new one was a close pair of clusters, ngc 2383 and 2384, both with a set of bright foreground stars, and a dense dusting of dozens of background stars. ngc 2367 is a beautiful wedge of stars, again with a dense filling of stars, and a close pretty double along its western leg.

Went and took a gander for the nth time at ngc 2362, what gets called the tau CMa cluster. So beautiful, with that bright member star right in the center, surrounded with a bright distinct compact set of gems. Done in excellent taste.

It was real fun visiting with old and new human pals. There were some extras toward midnight. There'd been no wind all night, and I'd been lulled into stupidity. A sharp breeze threw open my SkyAtlas. I was busy keeping pages from tearing out; Mike Delaney was alert, chased the acetate with the charting grids and magnitude sizes down the hill. Not something I wanted to have disappear. Just a bit later, Rob Hawley spotted a coyote silhouetted against the west edge of the lot. It peered over at us, decided we weren't all that interesting, and sauntered off.

At 0015 I had the place to myself, all packed up, thankful for another chance at the stars.

DDK