Mercey Hot Springs saturday 8/30/08

Dennis Beckley

Late last Saturday afternoon my wife Barbara and I took the trip down to the Deepsky Astronomical Research Center (D.A.R.C) near Mercey Hot Springs. It's an easy freeway ride down from Benicia along I-5 to the Panoche road exit and then a very pleasant trip through the picturesque golden brown rolling hills and winding canyons and high mesas. Cattle Country! Reminds me a lot of the trip down HW 118 heading down to the Texas Star Party. The resort at Mercey Hot Springs looks like something out of an old western movie. Looks like a great place for a writer searching to get away for a little solitude.

Renato had secured an invitation from Lee Hoglan, one of the property owners and co-director of the D.A.R.C observatory who graciously allowed us to set up our scopes and equipment on the observatory grounds. The Observatory is a work-in-progress with construction on-going for two domes and 36 inch and 30 inch equatorial mount telescopes which when completed will allow remote access visual viewing and photographic/CCD imaging.

The site is about 300 feet above the valley floor on a mesa with an unobstructed 360 degree horizon. It has the best southern horizon of any of the local sites I've been to in N. California. The one negative factor, being on a hilltop, was the wind which effected viewing till past midnight on Saturday night but which I was told by the regulars usually stops about one hour after sunset (Shades of Costa Rica! The locals told me on my ill-fated 2006 trip that it hardly ever rains in late February!). However I believe this prolonged wind was an aberation and due to some unusual weather pattern as we had high clouds that didn't really clear up until around 1:00 am. Once the wind died and the clouds cleared we had fabulous viewing until dawn. I was estimating the NLM to be around 7 and got two SQM readings of 21.69 and 21.74 about two hours apart. Big "thumbs up" for D.A.R.C!

Spent the night with my 18 and Tom O platform just showing off eye candy to the 10 or 12 folks gathered there as well as seeing two comets - the Bottini's J1 and W1. Renato and I were the last one's up around 4:30 in the morning and finished it off with a good look at the Horsehead through my scope with the H-Beta filter. The highlight of the night for me was actually looking at the compact little open cluster with surrounding nebulously NGC 1931 that just exploded with stars as I kept cranking up the power. I think it may have been in the Herschel 400 list that I completed many years ago but fun to revisit it with a bigger scope.

Slept for a couple of hours, packed up and stopped at the Los Banjos exit for a quick breakfast and then headed back home. Really looking forward to revisiting the next time we get an invitation.

Dennis Beckley