Mount Lassen, Bumpass hell report 7-31-08 thru 8-3-08

Greg LaFlamme

After missing out on GSSP, and only having only three nights at Bumpass last month, it was time return to the pristine dark sky's of Mount Lassen. SO glad I did :-) I would try Lassen for every new moon if snow wasn't an issue. I was lucky enough to be included with a small group of very experienced observers at my favorite place in California. For my money there is no better spot to finish the list I had prepared the month prior and we had an outstanding cast of friends up there to share the time with too. Steve Gottlieb, Mark Wagner, Richard Navarrete, Bob Jardine for goodness sakes!, super-Scott Baker and my ole pal Greg Claytor all together in astro-heaven. Ohhh happy times:-) I have a long list of objects to see and took a huge satisfying hunk right out of it. I'll tell ya, the gas money that I spend going to Coe or other local sites to complete the same list under much brighter skys makes the $200/3 night round trip to Lassen a deal that's hard to beat. It's a nice 4 1/2 hour drive from Alameda to the campsite (if I only stop once) and my anticipation of sky's to come increase as I ascend highway 44. Not only do I get to camp with friends and hang out during the day but those skys are unbelievable. You just have to see it for yourselves, if you haven't yet I really hope you do.

The first night: Thursday

The first two hours was amazing then the seeing got a little soft. No biggie, transparency held up pretty well. I tried something that I'd never done before. Armed with a close up b/w inverted print of M8 (the lagoon nebula), I went after Bok globules. Those are the black puffs of smoke that we see in astrophotos, obscuring the bright nebula behind them. Some are protostars, others will never condense enough to become stars. Surprising to me, got a few of them! It wasn't as hard as I had though it would be and a very satisfying project. I'll be going after more of them in the future. I shared the view with Scott and we were both impressed (unless he was faking;-) Greg C got his new Argo Navis working pretty well and was having a good time picking off a variety of objects. Mark, Richard and Bob were hard at work as well. Each gave us an occasional peak through their scopes as well as providing us with a good laugh now and then. Great guys and so fun to observe with.

Second night: Friday

Steve showed up and the whole gang was there! Unfortunately the seeing and transparency were both off a tad but the sky was still very usable. Greg was doing pretty well with his new Argo dsc's but he wanted to improve pointing accuracy a bit. Steve to the rescue! He gave me and Greg C a quick how-to on multiple star alignments and that was all Greg needed to really get it working well. Thanks Steve! Greg worked the sky like a man on a mission and the rest of us got ours as well. I really tore into my list logging 44 new objects with a good degree of careful scrutiny. Again, Steve showed us objects that I at least, never would have known about, much less seen. Two of them being planetary nebulas that until now were thought to be reflection nebulas! They are Sh2-71 and Png 027.0+01.5. Cool. Another one, Png 6026.2-03.4 is a newly discovered Planetary and thanks to Steve, the Bumpass gang got to be some of the first people to see it! Thanks so very much Steve! Oh ya, happy birthday to Sh2-71, Png 027.0+01.5 and Png 6026.2-03.4... Why I remember when you nebulas were just knee-high to a grasshopper;-) All this complete with Steve's narration, descriptions, ID's and everything! Even got to keep a dss sheet as a souvenir:-)

(its on eBay now by the way, 1k delivered to your in-conus door step- not ;-)

Around 1:00 I was starting to feel the sleep deprivation until Mark saved me with some chocolate. Never thought of that before and it did the trick. Got me all up and going again. Mark, Steve and Richard had their fill and pulled out the next morning shortly before I oozed from my tently lair. Scott fell sick of all things leaving Me, Bob and Greg to fend for ourselves. Around mid-day, Greg and I (you could say "the gregs") took a short hike to the sulfur pits then finished it off with a hot dog at the Lassen peak bar and grill. After a 1.5 hr nap, we had dinner then got ready for the last night at the Bumpass lot.

Third and last night: Saturday

Just Me, Claytor and Bob Jardine got to enjoy an almost perfect sky. The seeing was off /on but still remained in the arc-second range. I must be spoiled to use the word "off" because M57 gave up its central star in both my 15" and new 12.5" dobs at a rate of about once a minute for only a second or two. I call that "off"? The big globs were sugary and the transparency was downright spooky. NGC 7331 showed some dust lanes around the nucleus and mottling, it was gianormus! To use Mark Johnston's words, all four "fleas" were ablaze in the deer lick and the dim guy, NGC 7336 was easy to see. Stephan's appeared hazy and the largest I've ever seen it:-) I got into Pegasus cluster #1 and came home with 14 or so members including a new catalog member for me, "CGCG 406-45". Bob had to clue me in on that catalog, I'd never heard of it. IC4617 near M13 was easy pickings and 891 spoiled me rotten. Dude, dark skies rule! Bob Jardine showed me Pal 5, a tough to see glob and it was a tough get for my eye. Thanks for the leg-work Bob:-)

While looking at 6078, I noticed that it split into two galaxies, and there was another in the field nearby so into Urano Metria I went. After logging M+2-41-18 and nearby 6074, I noticed that Pal 14 was not too far away on the page. Still excited from seeing Pal 5 I thought I'd try for it. A little bit of star hopping, using a beautiful "Alberio" like double star as a guide post, there I was at the asterism surrounding the far-off glob. Bob carries a pretty substantial library with him and informed me that it was mag 14.7 and spread out over 2.1'. So, like a dummy, with no dss sheet and only a vague idea where it was from U/M I went after it. Per Bob's suggestion, I sketched the 1/4' field @270x. I caught a dim grey patch of light and marked its location. Mind you this is at the limit of my aversion so I continued studying the field. After a good 15 minutes of trying different eyepieces and tapping the ota, I caught another even dimmer patch and marked its location as choice #2. It took everything I had and over a half hour HARD WORK at the eyepiece to feel 20% sure that I saw something. Frankly it seemed like a futile waste of time and I was disappointed to a degree that so much time might have been lost, possibly over nothing. The next morning Bob and I looked at his lap top and found that my second choice was right, looks like I got a piece! I got home, looked at some astrophotos and it appears that one of two things may have happened. Either the two stars in front of the glob teased me into thinking I saw it or I really did glimpse the brighter outer portion of Pal 14. Bottom line izz, I drew a circle at the spot were Pal 14 is, so it goes into the log book along with the above paragraph :-) As time goes on and with the promise of a larger instrument, I'll try it again and hopefully refine my notes. For now its an exciting grain of salt. By the way, if one of the super experienced big-dog astronomers want to tear me a new one for even thinking I saw Pal 14, please save me the embarrassment and smack me around off-list:-)

Thanks to the whole gang for making this trip a blast, I'll never forget it.

Now for a quick Q and A from our technical department:

What did my squirrel say?

SQM readings were 21.72 @ zenith with the Milkyway directly overhead / 21.86 without. All three nights provided hand shadows on my log sheets. That never ceases to amaze me. I saw around 150 objects including eye candies and logged 94 new ones. Of those, about 8 were OC's, 6 globs, a few planetaries and the rest galaxies. Just like I like it:-)

GML ---