Peak Last Saturday

by Jamie Dillon

So it'd just gotten dark, I was lining up the hop for ngc 4710, the one object I really wanted to see that night. There were plenty of visitors going up and down from the Observatory. Someone behind me said, "Looking at anything good?" I was right in the middle of finishing the hop in the 9x50 finder, so I said, "Finding a galaxy, if you want to hang on I'll show it to you." Didn't look over my shoulder. It was my buddy Ranger Derek; soon's as he figured out I didn't know who it was he just waited quietly right behind me to have some fun. When I looked up from the eyepiece (got it centered first try, yesss), there was this big ranger inches away. I jumped pretty good. Anyway, we got into an active and wide-ranging conversation. Presently, Derek looked at his watch and said, "Whoa, it's midnight, I gotta go lock the gate." I went, "Whoa, I gotta eat my dinner." We'd jawed for 2.5hours straight. Clearly we get along.

People will tell you that on the respectable continuum from socializing observers to chart-and-eyepiece observers, I'm on the C & E end. Can spend hours being real quiet. Fun night, though, watching the Milky Way wheel across the sky.

Good night, too. Seeing was on the soft end of good, 3.5 out of 5. Limiting magnitude was 6.0. Did sit and study M24, that endless starcloud, and Jupiter, and some other assorted goodies.

NGC 4710, that opening galaxy, was on Steve Gottlieb's list of spring favorites in Astronomy magazine, the only one I'd never seen. It's tilted just off edge-on, with lots of mottling thru the disk. Interestingly also, it showed a vertical dark lane, that is, perpendicular to the axis of the disk, about a third of the way out from the center. Complex object.

Packed and ready to head to Chico tomorrow, be getting into Lost Creek lunchtime Friday.

Clear skies to all, DDK