Lake Sonoma 3-4-08

Greg LaFlamme

Last night I met Steve Gottlieb at Lake Sonoma and we were treated to the darkest skys I've recorded at Lone Rock yet! Just as it was getting dark Steve goes whoa Greg, look at that. The Zodiacal light was obnoxious and actually intersected with the Milky Way! It was a heck of a way to be introduced to that phenomenon.. I really enjoy that site and it is by far the darkest site within 1.5 hours of my house. Its mostly flat freeway driving and I can get just under 20mpg in my truck. I use less gas and have better horizons/darkness by going there instead of Coe and the like. SQM readings at Lone Rock by my meter are usually around 21.30 and to me, that's about as dark as I need the sky to be to see most objects very well. On this night, as the Zodiacal light sunk in the West, the sky darkened from the usual 21.28 to 21.37. As the Milky way scooted more Westerly, it got darker, it was so dark that I could see my hand in front of my face:-) Steve mentioned that galaxies were really popping out well tonight. So out came the meter again. I got six consistent readings of 21.48! That's like LSA and in the realm of Plettstone/Willow springs. We looked at a few objects together and discussed them (he discussed, I listened eagerly) I love Jones 1 in Peg and Steve showed me the other Jones/Emberson Pn,,, so now I have the whole set:)

I worked through about two pages of Deep map and even worked in Pocket Sky Atlas for awhile. For me it was mixed bad of objects, OC's, Gx's a couple Pln's and even revisited the intergalactic wanderer. I could just pick out the Horsehead without an H beta filter but with the filter, I could almost mount that pony. I remember reading that the cone nebula was a difficult object to see visually so I went after it! Gave it all I had and came up with mud in my teeth. I feel I got a sense of the stars/nebulosity at the tip of the cone but I won't dare claim it. Like always, Steve came through with tons of invaluable information and even straightened me out on a couple planetary nebulas. One I couldn't identify "j900" needed to be blinked with a filter (I'll come back to that one a Plettstone) but NGC 2436 is where his help was most appreciated. I thought I saw it and was curious why his description didn't point out that there was nebulosity around another nearby star. This is where working along side a pro helps, He looked and said that's not nebulosity, its stray light around the brighter stars. Turns out I was using 78x on an object that required more like 200x or so to see it well. We magged up and there was the planetary...Duuuhh!!! I should probably get my objects in order by type so to avoid constant changes of magnification / filtering. Hey, I'm learning.. It was a bit windy with 6-10 mph gusts but it never effected my observing and my scope was rock solid for the most part. I had to clip my charts/notes to my music stand and I even lowered the stand, worried that it might blow over. Magnification in my scope was limited to 400x or so. We pulled out around 11:30 and I was in bed a 1:15..

My ratings:

Seeing: 6-7 / 10
Transparency: 8 /10 ( If Steve has a different opinion, then I agree with him;-)
Barley: Never effected my vision ;-)

I am really looking forward to Plettstone Friday and Saturday and hope to see you there.

GML