Bonny Doon May 31, 2008

Mark Johnston

We were treated to a few hours of skies with 1 period of maybe 45 minutes of mostly open sky as John and Elisabeth have mentioned. Considering there was a reasonable chance we would get nothing at all I for one was very glad to have made it out. On the way up to Bonny Doon Airport I finally stopped a few times on the way along Felton Empire road and wandered amid the redwoods. It was very enjoyable and at the time I figured there was a good chance that was all that would come of the trip so enjoyed the walks.

Up at the site a large group on the order of 8 scopes were setup by sunset with much socializing. Enjoyed talking to the Santa Cruz folks who are a friendly group. A bit after 10 things opened up in one area and then another. It seemed there was close to an hour where a very large section of the sky was open and free of the thin high-level clouds that would eventually shut things down starting a bit after 11 where only selective areas would be available till about 11:45 range.

Because targets I had hopped to catch were either below the transparency limits for any given area of sky it was a night of eye-candy hopping about with Saturn, M51, M101, M13, and the Leo Triplet. NGC3628 being on the low surface brightness range was difficult to pick out from the transparency as well as early point in the night I pulled it up.

Had been re-observing assorted deep sky objects with NGC2903 being about the largest apparent size on the list. Had a chance to detect the tail in NGC4027 down south which was a first for me to be able to really see that tail.

Re-visited the M105 area triplet where I wanted to make some more observations of NGC3389. I have wondered for a while why M105 would have been picked as a Messier object and NGC3384 which is only just slightly dimmer and right next to M105 would be not included and I guess it is that the summitry of the elongated NGC3384 does not look like a comet but the spherical look of M105 may be confused as a comet thus it was included.

As the sky began to choke up it was glob-time starting with M13 as it was in the open and a bit before I tore down open areas allowed views of M5, M12, and M10 which I had not spent much time on this year and Ophiuchus being the last section of sky to peek through before the night was over.

Due shut a lot of people down earlier so heaters and shields were up on my gear and I was lucky enough to not be impacted by that but wouldn't you know it, I had left my 'high cloud' filter at home ... so those signaled 'Game Over'. Packed up and left by 12:30.