Sat 1 March 2008 Lake Sonoma

Matthew Marcus

The CSCs were unpromising, but I went anyway and am glad I did. There were a few other people there, some of whom had to leave early and some chased off by the chill wind. Despite that, after early cloudiness, the sky was reasonably transparent and the seeing quite decent. I got 5 in the Trapezium, the 5th coming and going, as did Cassini's Division in Saturn's rings. I remember when it was Encke's that was the challenge, but the rings are much more edge-on now and that really makes a difference. A little detail showed up on Mars, which is now obviously gibbous. After seeing what it did in other people's scopes for Saturn and Mars, I bought a Baader Contrast filter and found that it does indeed help. A curious thing I noticed is some color fringing on objects that were high in the sky. It turns out that the fringing switched sides on moving the object in the field of the 8mm Plossl, so it's in the eyepiece and not in the sky. I wonder why I didn't notice it without the filter.

I looked for Comet Holmes, but didn't have a finder chart and didn't succeed. I wonder if it's still visible.

The Zodiacal Light was quite conspicuous, reaching halfway up the sky. With two bright planets to mark the ecliptic, the scene was almost like a textbook drawing showing the Light pointing along the ecliptic. I don't think it faded until 9 or 10. At midnight, I tried looking for the Gegenschein, again along the ecliptic, but did'nt see anything.

After doing lots of eye candy with some newbies, I got down to some fuzzy-hunting, after everybody else was gone. First up were a bunch of galaxies in Cancer, some of them belonging to the Cancer I cluster.

At one point, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing a m12.1 galaxy, looked at the scope and sure enough, it was dewed. I had left off the dew shield because of the wind and paid the price. I tried the same remedy that failed at Coyote a couple of months back, mainly warming the car and aiming the scope at it, with dew shield on. This time it worked within half an hour and I was back on the air. Along with galaxies, I logged a large, faint PN in Cancer, a Sharpless object (I forget the number; I don't have the logsheets at hand). I then switched to Puppis and got some of the big, bright OCs I'd somehow missed logging, as well as revisiting old favorites like M46 and NGC2640 (I think - a nice, large PN). After that, Saturn was at the meridian, so I looked at it some more, then went to CVn for some spring galaxy eye candy and, of course, M3. Finally, I 'scooped the Lion's litterbox', sweeping the area between Leo, Coma and Virgo, otherwise known as galaxy country. I didn't try to identify anything or navigate, just look at what was there. This is a pleasant diversion I recommend as a low-key sort of observing, sort of the opposite of Messier Marathoning.

By midnight, I decided to wuss out instead of putting on a snowsuit, which I should have done hours before, and went home. Let's leave something for next time! mam