Coe 12/30, aka Adventures of a newbie-TACo

James Varley

I was thinking of titling this “How to Haze a Newbie TACo” but decided that had too negative a connotation and not representative of my experiences. Although, I think there should be some sort of “initiate” ritual for us newbs (kind of like my work has the “Donut Rules” for new hires/promotions, where the new hire/promoted folk is required to provide donuts under certain circumstances), the best I got was “you’re to give the official OR!”… :-)

Anyway, on to the “official” observing report. I’m going to streamline the introduction as I kind of gave that in a reply to another thread, but will include a snippit to cover the entire evening from my perspective.

I knew it wasn’t going to be a perfect experience (my first times doing anything are always fraught with issues), and sure enough while getting my gear and packing it all I found my thermos shattered under some boxes…so no hot liquids for me. Anyway, I left in time to arrive at 4pm, just to find the gates locked, I couldn’t easily find the ranger nor find anyone obviously looking to observe, so I waited behind the visitor center and took in the surroundings. It is quite a beautiful place, I may have to come back for a hiking/camping trip. After watching the beautiful golden/red sunset over the westward hills I watched for any signs of the ranger or other observers. Eventually someone showed up about half an hour or so after dark and I met him at the gate. Eric (or is it Erik?) and I chatted about options, mainly thinking the Ranger was just a little late at getting the gate dummy locked when our third member arrived, Peter. We tried a few communication channels to see if the ranger was on his way, and even went to look for alternate sites where the campgrounds were located or if we should just stay in front of the gate. Eventually we decided to just setup in front of the gate.

As we were nearly finished with setting up Rogelio drove up and went and got the Ranger who came and unlocked the gate. So we partially packed up and relocated and enjoyed the rest of the evening. While completing our setup the second time around, Dan Wright (which I swear he introduced himself as Damn Right!) showed up and setup to enjoy the evening as well.

I was all setup and ready to go about 7:30-45-ish. I sat back in my observing chair and counted stars in the Pleiades, which were near zenith, figuring this would be a good way to determine approximate darkness. With direct and averted vision I counted 8 stars, possibly 9 depending on how far out you consider the boundary of the Pleiades. This is a far cry better than the 6 I can see at my house on a very good night. So in my C9.25 with a 22mm Nagler (~100x mag) I could see definite wisps of the reflection nebulae around the brighter stars, this was a first for me and I was quite excited. They even showed a hint in my 80ED with 17mm Nagler (~35x mag), where the cluster was nicely framed.

During my scope’s alignment routine it chose Rigel as one of the calibration stars and I was shocked to see Rigels’ component quite clearly (I had forgotten it was a double, I did say in a previous post that I didn’t get out much. :-) ) The diffraction rings were quite prominent and the seeing was pretty darn good in my opinion, but I don’t know how to measure it. Though after a quick websearch I’d say it was somewhere between 7 to 9 on the Pickering Scale. I threw my plans to sketch a couple of open clusters out the window and spent the evening darting around objects seeing things in much more detail than I’ve seen before. In focus I could clearly see several diffraction rings and the airy disk so I checked collimation of my SCT. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for me so I left it alone (I even asked Eric what he thought and he concurred).

Rogelio mentioned that this evening wasn’t the best for Coe and that it has been better, but I’m happy I took the nearly 2 hour drive to get there. There was the usual light dome (which is also my first real experience “seeing” a light dome and not being in one!) around San Jose all the way to Gilroy. There was also some odd haze that obscured the westward/southward viewing sky up to about 40-45ish degrees. There was even some haze up to about the 25 degrees line to the East, but generally anything in between was pretty darn clear (clearer than the sky I usually observe under).

Objects I looked at through my scopes included: Pleiades (M45), Orion Nebula (M42 and M43) and the Trapezium (E component was easy to split at 100x, F was averted vision), Crab Nebula (M1), M36, M37, M38 open clusters, NGC457 (ET/Owl Cluster), Andromeda Galaxy (M31), Beehive Cluster (M44), Saturn and finally ended the evening on M51. One goal I had for the evening was to practice some sketching, but by the time I got around to it (NGC457) I was too cold to do much good, and I need lotsa lotsa practice…

Eric showed off a few other nebulae and clusters in his DOB, through the course of the evening Dan showed us some other interesting objects through his 10”SCT and Piggy-backed Refractor, the notable one I’ll be looking to get at again is the Winter Albiero. His Binoviewers were really fun to look through as well (thanks Dan! Now my wife’s really gonna kill me…). Meanwhile Rogelio and Peter were busy imaging throughout the evening and talking “shop” for imagers. Ok, ok, we all sat around for a while and BS’d about a bunch of stuff, imaging gear and software was just one of the topics of conversation… :-)

Peter also showed us how adept he was at assembling a mount and OTA with DuctTape, but the rigged mount was in sad need of some help (garbage pile was mentioned a couple of times), though the views through the 80mm Orion “It’s Just a Guidescope” achromat were pretty good.

Through the course of the evening we also caught a few good meteors. Nothing like a fireball, but one of the good one’s lingered for a good 5-10 seconds before dissipating fully. I was treated to about 3 meteors streaking through the EP as I was observing objects. That’s always a treat!

Eric and Peter packed up first a little after midnight, while Dan and I packed up closer to 1-1:30am. I was on my home before 2am. Rogelio was determined to finish up his M81 shots and stuck around until much later!

I can’t wait until the next time I can get out, even with the “issues” with the gate I’ll definitely be heading back to Coe at somepoint, and looking forward to trips to LSA or Dino Pt, and of course I’ll have to check out Montebello and Bonny Doon…but everyone was raving about Michelle’s place, though I’m not sure if that was 2nd hand or 1st hand experiences… :-)

Oh, and it was indeed colder than I was prepared for. Guess I’ve never been out in sub 40F weather…gotta get me some better cold weather gear (mainly for the feet and hands). Next time I’m not going to think I’m being polite by declining an offer of a hot beverage. My toes didn’t fully thaw out until I got home at 3:45… Lesson learned!

Happy New Year and Clear Skies for 2009 IYA!

Jim Varley