Great time at Plettstone 8-29/30 08

Greg LaFlamme

I always have a great time at Plettstone but this one was the biggest and best ever. We had the food, the fun and good'n dark skys. Its hot during the day but sitting inside, watching the big screen in air conditioned comfort surrounded by tasty vittles,, you would never know it. The Saturday night food fest was fantastic, beginning with Marsha's crackers & Brie and finishing with Paul's BBQ burgers and sausage, Margaritas! Not to mention all the other the other assorted snacks and goodnesses. A great time was had for sure.

Friday night the group was small and not much communication was going on, just the sounds of crickets, flipping pages and slewing drives. I was wearing shorts, sandals and a tee-shirt all night. Mark Wagner showed me a pretty little open cluster with nebulosity in his 18" and a couple other faint planetary. Occasionally there would be hot pockets of air that wafted through the property that felt like a heater had been turned on. I checked out Jones 1 with an OIII (I love that one) I also went after several Hicksons. When it came to Hickson, I was unprepared. A small group of great observers formed and we took it on together. The ever-prepared Bob Jardine came through with a DSS sheet for the group and now armed with data, Scott Baker, Michelle and myself were all able to pick out the C and D components, the latter being a mag 16 slash of light near a pair of stars. Michelle caught the slash first. Its fun to have group observation like that, I always learn something cool. After logging 20 objects I could no longer keep my wits about me so I crawled into my truck bed / hibernation chamber and crashed out for the evening. Saturday was a time for lounging around and chatting with friends.

Although Friday night was a little steadier than Saturday night but both nights were very usable and I used them, no complaining here. Saturday afternoon the rest of the gang arrived. It was great to meet Alvin Huey, Randy Muller and Bill Porte for the first time and see Jane Smith and Marsha Robinson again. From Randy's pictures I can see that she had an 8mm Ethos on hand, wish I knew that, I want to try out one of those. I spent most of Saturday night with Michael and Terese, a couple I met at Coe the week prior. They are interested in the visual end of the hobby but enjoy the physics side of things as well. They attend lectures and even have some on DVD! Now that's commitment:-) They're learning about telescopes and looking to try out different Dobsonians. I offered to give them a complete tour. I still had 20 more objects to see on my list but as it turned out, I had a great time sharing pieces of eye candy with them and even dipping into the dimmer stuff like the Dear Lick group near 7331 and Stephan's fivetet. The seeing was a tad soft, fainter doubles split ok but brighter ones like the Double-trouble were tough at lower powers. Funny thing about star brightness...

After my company left, I pursued Alvin Huey's super-bad 22" f/4.1 to get an idea of the visual impact over a 15" scope and I'm so glad I did. The difference wasn't subtle, I need a 22" scope. He took a break and allowed Scott Baker, Mike Delaney and myself try it out on a whole slew of objects, taking turns soaking them in. NGC 7331 becomes a whole nuther animal in a scope like that, showing some thin dark lanes and huge haze. The Deer Lick was "slap me" bright, couldn't get over it... Stephan's was large and hazy, The Veil was immersive and loaded with ribbonry. Thanks so much Alvin, that visit with you and the eye-time with your scope was so enjoyed and a lesson in aperture!

Thanks Michelle and Paul for hosting such a wonderful event!

GML