Bonny Doon Airfield 09Feb2008

Tony Hurtado

Well, I think Mark has covered all the interesting bits, but I want to add my $0.02 about how good a site Bonny Doon Airfield really is. I was skeptical at first about how dark it would be there considering the Santa Cruz Mountains are rather well populated these days, but from the South through West and up to the North was really dark sky. Think of Coe looking to the SE on a night where fog is covering the valley lights. Of course, the east suffered from the light dome that is San Jose and the South Bay, but the trees there, covering up to ~30-40 deg - Polaris just topped the trees - did a very good job of making it a non-issue. There was a much smaller light dome from Santa Cruz that was a little bit obtrusive, but I believe the guys that frequent Bonny Doon that once the fog rolls in, as is common, Santa Cruz lights go away. Beyond that, there just aren't any more lights. Nice flat area with your choice of grass or asphalt. Easy ride in and out. Great for folks that live o n the west side of the Santa Clara valley. Good stuff. I'll be back for sure.

One thing I think Mark didn't stress enough were the low horizons. Man! There was virtually no extinction right down to the tree line which was only a couple of degrees off the deck. There was a notch through which Mu Vela was shining and there was more blackness below it as well. That's just about all of Vela, folks! Almost all of Puppis cleared the trees, all of Antlia, Columba, Pyxis, lots of Eridanus (I was working the middle regions for a while). The entire swath of south through northwest was flat and open. Paul Duncan had used the phrase "Best west in the West" and now I know why. Good stuff here, folks. Not to be missed. I have a certain penchant for the SC Mountains as it is, so it doesn't take much to get me up there, so this is a really good spot for me.

The weather on Sat night was less than completely cooperative, but judging from the sounds of things, we probably were the favored site that night! Clouds with nary a sucker hole persisted until just before 10pm, and I'm not really sure why we hung there as long as we did, but it certainly paid off. The last band of clouds swept from west to east and then it was clear. I'm talking Horsehead Nebula clear here since that's one of the targets we went after, just to test the seeing. Troy, the owner of a 20" dob there, was scouting around Zeta Orionis in search of ol' B33 w/o a filter. I had just observed it a few minutes earlier, and offered him my H-beta filter. And then, POP, there it was. Another happy camper.

I spent the rest of the evening searching for Hershells, mostly in Orion, Eridanus, Monoceros, CMa, and Puppis. A couple of months ago I had a database 'accident' and lost some of my Hershell logs, putting me back down to a count of around 180, so now I'm up to around 230 and pressing onward. Lots of OCs in Puppis and Eridanus (nice low horizons for that job). Other nice views were Saturn with 5 moons including one tucked in really close to the rings, B33 and the Flame.

Lots of good folks up at Bonny Doon. Check it out some new moon.

-Tony