Quicky OR *WAS* good night we had last night

Jay Critchfield

I'll second and third that. We had the opportunity to observe from the ranch where we keep our horse in the Cupertino hills above Stevens Creek Reservoir, a short 15 minute drive from home. We setup in the back pasture on the south side of the property. Fantastic horizons all around with the bay area lights to the north and east mostly blocked by the tree line. The sky started off soft until around 11:30pm and then slowly improved until 1:30am when the fog completely covered the city lights. The southern sky was awesome all the way to the horizon. It was a real treat to see the milky way so prominent that close to home. We had gone up to do some imaging runs in preparation for GSSP and while that was running my friend Greg and I took turns at my 12.5" f/6 Albert-O-Scope. The ranch owner came up around 10:30 and stayed for an hour chatting with us as we showed her some eye candy. This was Greg's first time star hopping and he had a ball working from Deep Map 600 picking off a lot of the brighter objects. It was great fun to help someone get their feet wet as it wasn't that long ago Mr. Dillon spent some time with me at CalStar getting me off to a good start. I didn't prepare any lists or have a plan just pulled out the Pocket Atlas and poked around the southern sky picking off galaxies, clusters and nebula. Some times we would just cruise the milky way finding objects and then looking up what they were. Great fun. We finally had to quit around 5:15am as night started to become day. We packed up and drove home in the early morning dawn. I didn't take detailed notes but here is a quick run down of what I can remember.

Messier's 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 16, 17, 18, 22, 24, 28, 51, 57, 80, 104 and 107
NGC's 5812, 5813, 5824, 5838, 5846, 5850, 5882, 6144, 6200, 6250, 6388, 6440, 6445, 6522, 6528, 6638 and 6642
IC 4699
Saturn, Mars and Jupiter

Jay