MB, Monday 2/4/2008: Windy but sharp

Marek Cichanski

About five of us went to Montebello last night and enjoyed some excellent seeing, despite the cold and wind.

If I recall correctly, it was myself, George Feliz, Elisabeth Oppenheimer, Jeff Weiss, and Mark Johnston. Apologies if I've forgotten anyone. Jeff was imaging M78, I believe, and the rest of us were using a variety of scopes for visual work. George had his 10" MB Special - inspriation for my perpetually-under-construction 10" - Elisabeth continued kicking rear and taking names with her Orion Starblast, Mark was using a neat side-mount combo of an 11" MCT and a 100mm refractor on a G-11, and I think that Jeff was imaging with a 10" MCT. I had dragged the 18" up the hill again, it still being my one working scope.

On the way home from work, and while driving up the hill, I couldn't help noticing how good the transparency seemed to be. Details of the landscape on the other side of the bay were razor sharp, and I looked forward to a night of really good transparency. If you can't have fog below you, blocking the city lights, a really transparent night is the next best thing.

Sadly, the transparency didn't quite live up to our hopes, but the seeing was really good. We found that targets in the dark western part of the sky just weren't quite popping out the way we thought they would, and so it wasn't quite as transparent as we'd hoped - at least not to the west. The seeing, however, was great. I had some of the best Trapezium views I've had in a long time, and Mars and Saturn looked fabulous.

The other downside, though... was the wind. It was moving the scopes around pretty good, but there were 'windows of opportunity' in which we had some amazing views. I guess you could say that the overall frustration level on Mars and Saturn was about like usual - but instead of waiting for the seeing to steady out, one waited for the wind to die down. At one point I was up to 470x (5mm t6 Nagler), and Mars was showing Syrtis Major beautifully. The rings and moons of Saturn were also just beautiful. During the steady moments, the area where the rings passed in front of the planet was just lovely. Dione, Rhea, and Tethys made a nice trio of moons preceding the planet, and Enceladus and Titan trailed behind. I didn't quite catch Mimas, preceding just in front of the rings, according to SNP.

I realized with some horror that this was the first time I'd used my 18" since two months earlier. Yikes! It was my second time with the Sky Commander, and I am still sold on it. It is so nice to just punch up and object and "push-to". A couple of times I used the Telrad and finder scope to go to, say, M41 just for fun.

I used the SC to noodle around in several different areas, just picking objects off of SA 2000 and punching them into the control box. I looked at a number of galaxies in Cetus and Eridanus, and even some galaxies in Canis Major, which was neat. George and I enjoyed using both his 10" scope and my 18" scope on the NGC 2292/ 2293 / 2295 area, in CMa. It took the bigger scope to be certain that we'd seen the dimmer of the 2292/2293 pair. 2295 was a nice edge-on-ish galaxy nearby. Fun field of view!

So, it was a quite worthwhile night. After all of the clouds and rain that we've had, it felt really good to get out and enjoy the 'MB ritual' again. I savored all of it - loading up the car, putting tea and hot food into their respective thermoses, driving up the road, setting up, chewing the fat with the other observers, swapping views, picking off galaxies and clusters, savoring M42, gaping at Mars and Saturn, tearing down, locking the MB gate, and driving down the hill at midnight. A good winter night, and I'm thankful for it.

Marek Cichanski