Taking the boys to Lassen

by Jamie Dillon

It was Groucho, and he was talking about the anti-Semitism he ran into when he and his family moved to LA. Which makes it even funnier after our conversation about how many smart TACos are Jewish.

Lassen this year was really great fun. Jim Everitt and his boy Evan, Liam and I made the trip together, stopped in Chico overnight. Liam and I hadn't been to Lassen since 2003. If I tried to name the people I was delighted to see and visit with, I'd screw up and miss someone important.

Hopefully cogent notes -

Camp cleanup, for which I'd signed up, was cake. The TACos did a far better job at keeping a tidy campground at Lost Creek than we did our last time there, in 2001. Joe Bob, Liam and I did a camp sweep on Sunday morning, and got 3 handfuls of trash, total, almost all of which was older than that weekend.

With everyone with whom I'd conspired in e-mail to make sure and get together with, it worked. Except my dear buddy Nilesh. Did get to meet the Astronomess in the flesh. LeFevre looked remarkably like LeFevre, after long years. Gortatowsky, who once upon a time bestowed the name of DDK, mentioned how we've never swapped eyepiece time! That's weird and needs to be fixed. The three TAC listadmins had a plenary session right there at Lost Creek. It was as profound as you might imagine.

Shoeless observing can work, amazingly, if you got friends. Yes I'd packed every other needed item, including warm socks. Turley's fuzzy slippers worked great at Devastated, and Saturday night I got to wear the Shoes of the Animal. Sincere thanks to other pals who offered footwear.

Observing notes -

Friday night at Devastated there was a whole raft of TACos whom I hadn't met before, from Antioch up to Sonoma. Along with Denis of Salinas and us two Dillon Salinans, there was Rich Girard, Sean Gene, this guy with a fancy 15" Obsession, and a bunch of others. Cordial crew. Conditions were real good. I got a Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude of 6.4. The seeing varied from 3/5 to 4/5, moderate to good. My main object of the night was the Milky Way moving overhead, as amazing and wild as it gets from a really dark site. I did go gather galaxies in Bootes. This was partly in honor of Linebarger and Wagner, who on a Lassen trip years ago made a project of getting galaxies right there, thru most of a great night at Bumpass.

At Bumpass the next night I had Cone, the actual Robert Shelton, and Coyote Lou for neighbors. Bobby Czerwinski, it must be said, marvelously materialized as well, having just pulled in from Mexico City. Decent night as well, NELM of 6.5, which I've only passed twice ever so far. Seeing was 5/5, Jupiter was literally awesome, as folks have mentioned.

Yo, Greg, 32 stars in that Ursa Major triangle will give a NELM of 7.1 http://obs.nineplanets.org/lm/rjm3.html. I'm honestly not sure if humans can really see stars at 7.4.

(This was all with 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.)

At Bumpass I chased a set of galaxies from DeepMap that are starting to set in the West, in Virgo and Coma. No skyglow there that night, nice contrast. There was this one cool surprise, stumbling onto this big patch of irregular mottling that was right where a galaxy was charted in SkyAtlas, ngc 4145 in CVn, not far SE of Chara. It had a splotchy shape, and really did look like the background motting you can get in Cepheus on a good night. Looking in SkyAtlas Companion, it's Holmberg 324a, and thankfully SAC mentions that Holmberg 324b is attached. Once you started looking and thinking of two adjacent galaxies, the splotch turned into a big oval and a smaller one right next to it. I sat and stared at this set for a long while, made other people come look, including the Animal. Turns out Holmberg did two main galaxy collections, one of dwarf galaxies, like the Holmbergs in the M81 group I had heard of. He also did a long set of interacting galaxies, like these two, which are listed at about 45 million lightyears from here.

Animal also showed a trick I hadn't known about. When you're looking at a diffuse galaxy that looks uniform and isn't showing a core, stare straight at it with direct vision. The halo that's been showing up in averted vision will fade, and if there's a brighter core it'll appear. With 4145, sure enough a big oval core appeared, still fairly dim but distinct.

Gottlieb then showed off a magic trick with ngc 6572, a bright PN in Ophiuchus. If I describe it, it'll spoil the experiment and the surprise. Ask him next time. And one more item in this encounter with the Astro Animal. Steve knew right away, with no explanation, how to best use my focuser. Gottlieb immediately reached for the right set screw to work the slip tube. Yesss. It has a pedigree, being a Kevin Medlock design and having been fabricated by Crazy Ed Erbeck. Up to now, I'm the only person who's liked using it. It has a very fine focus adjustment. Works great, esp now that I keep those threads dusted.

I'll say out loud here that the very best aspect of the whole trip was traveling with my best traveling buddy Liam. We had good fun together. Taking Liam and Evan to Burney Falls was a treat as well; I'd seen Burney once in '74 and hadn't forgotten it. Wonderful.

We really are a tribe still. Know each other way too well. The banter and piss-taking reach a high and sophisticated level. Great friends. And Lassen Park is so clean and beautiful, with literally worldclass skies.

How we say, Joe Bob, more of this!

DDK