Montebello #1, 20070911

by Christopher Hendrie

Personal digression: In the spring of 2003, I flew to the Bay Area from Canada to interview for my current job. My fiancee and I spent the Memorial Day weekend before my interview exploring the area, trying to decide if we'd like living here. Our first outing took us up Page Mill road en route to the ocean, and we stopped at Montebello OSP to take a break from the twisty drive. It was a lovely warm day, and I recall California poppies, western fence lizards, and the wonderful view across the valley from the path. So Montebello is one of my formative California memories, and it's a good one. (End of digression)

I brought my 100ED and binoculars, and did most of my observing at 75x and 150x. I hurriedly scraped together a observing plan from the TAC Messier's-of-September list and Ken Graun's book "The Next Step". I'm trying to get "serious", in the sense of doing some preparation up front to help make the most of my time at the telescope (but not in the sense of having any less fun!). I also hope to temper my gearhead and academic tendencies by subordinating them to disciplined observing goals.

Skies were clear, and the southern part of the Milky Way showed lots of detail. Seeing started poor (Jupiter jumping and blurring, I couldn't see the scheduled GRS transit) but improved to fair later as the wind died down. I came seriously underdressed for the cool evening, after weeks of bringing unnecessary hats & mittens to Houge Park and Coyote Lake, so I wasn't as patient or relaxed as I'd hoped. (Lesson learned: I'm going to start leaving observing outerwear in the car so I'm not tempted to skimp). Overall, Montebello skies were a wonderful surprise. I'm glad we have a place this good this close to home, suitable for observing on a work night.

It was a hoot to meet George, Marek, James, Shane, Sarah, and the other guy (sorry, I guess N-1 names was my limit; maybe I'm leaving neurons free for NGC numbers). Thanks to George and Marek for getting the ball rolling, and especially George for sharing tips and tricks and adding an extra 6 new targets to my successes for the night.

My planned new targets included M92, M14, M69, M70, M54, M8, M20, M21, and M23; most of them were easy but I spent a while fishing for M14. Later, George plied me with encouragement and tips which led me to M55, M75, M30, M72, M73, and 7009. He introduced me to 7789, too, but I'm not confident that I found it in my own scope (cold and fatigue were setting in at that point). Shane mentioned that he'd always wanted to see an asteroid, but I hadn't checked the position of Vesta since it's recent close approach to Jupiter, so he fired up his notebook and we tried to get his Meade software to tell us where it was. Armed with an approximate location, I tried to match starfields up with my Sky Atlas 2000 and look for "the star that shouldn't be there". Unfortunately, mentally subtracting mirror-reversed starfields proved too difficult, so I never realized that I was looking right at Vesta. Sorry, Shane, we'll get it next time! The asteroid hunt did at least led me to M19 and another checkmark on my list. (Lesson learned: print out a pile of ephemerides before I head out). My favorite view of the night was probably the Lagoon Nebula: somehow I'd never gotten around to it before, and I found the dust lane quite distinct and three-dimensional even in my small telescope. I finally got around to looking at "the" double double in my own telescope, and it split subtly but elegantly at 75x; to me, epsilon 1b appeared slightly warmer than epsilon 1a.

Random equipment notes:

* At first I extended the legs on my EZTouch tripod quite a bit, trying to make the zenith more accessible, but it added so much shake that I had to bring it back down and grovel around in the dirt like usual.

* George's Pocket Sky Atlas was so much more convenient than my Sky Atlas 2000.0; I'm eager for the next printing so I can get one. Overall the Sky Atlas 2000.0 is proving the "odd atlas out", neither compact nor comprehensive, and I'm so enamored of the Millennium Star Atlas I may start lugging it around; I'm trying to delay the "just bring a computer" stage for as long as possible.

* Even in these early stages, it's starting to get finicky to track which objects I've seen and which I haven't, so I'd like to pick some structured observing log format or software soon. Maybe AstroPlanner will work, but I'd prefer to find something less document-centric.

Regards,
Christopher