Greg LaFlamme
Scott Baker and I went to Lake Sonoma last night, stopping for diner on the way. When we arrived, the entire South end of the parking lot was full of horse trailers, horses and people. They were having an endurance race I and from what I could gather, Lone Rock was one of the staging areas. It worked out ok, there was one lantern that I could see but it was only a bother if I looked that way and it was turned off by 9:30 I believe. It was a very good night and seeing was steady enough to allow 320x magnification whenever I needed to go that high. Transparency seemed a bit off at first but by 11:00 or so, SQM readings increased from 21.12 to 21.35 then tapered off to 21.26, plenty dark. There were about nine astronomers in the lot with us, mostly non-TACos and friendly just the same. I got to (for the second time in life) pear through a pair of Fujinon 150's. Great binoculars and huge! I actually caught some of M81's outer arm structure with them. Time with my 12.5" grab and go was spent working through a few of the galaxy clusters in Pegasus and Pisces. The sky was deep enough that I was able to see IC1636, a mag 15.4 gx in Pisces and even detect a bar and stellar nucleus. Sky tools says there's more.. "Interaction evident with another connected by a bar." Neato! With a DSS in hand, I went after the WLM. It was relatively easy to detect by moving the scope up and down and once I had it, I was able to hold it directly. In my averted vision, it even seemed to sparkle a bit but I'm sure that was an optical illusion. We checked out many of the winter treats and Scott took a few of us on a tour of objects that require an H-beta filter. That 14.5 Starmaster puts up a great show! He introduced a few seasoned observers to there first view of the Horse head, California and Crescent nebulas. Seeing the Horse head while surrounded by horses was a bit ironic but thankfully we were "upwind" :-) We called it a night just after 2:30 and I got home in less than 1.5 hrs. Well worth the gas.I hear the folks who went to Dino had a great evening as well, how were the other sites?
GML
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