Lake Sonoma 1-26-09 Monday night astronomy

Greg LaFlamme

I arrived an hour or so before sunset, took a 25 minute nap, a little recharge from the 1:45 minute drive up. I was joined by Steve Gottlieb, Carter Scholz and Bob Douglas. Observing conditions were very nice, clear and transparent. SQM readings were 21.37 early on then darkened to 21.47 by 10:00 or so. By the way, all three of our SQ meters got the same readings for the second week in a row. Lake Sonoma is dark and the very tall beam of Zodiacal light teamed up with Venus to challenge our dark adapted eyes. Temps were in the mid-thirties. Seeing was a just a tad on the soft side but otherwise very nice, allowing 225x to 318x to be used. At one point, while seeking the Pup, Steve and I both pushed passed the 450x point. Unfortunately, my 12.5" scope displayed an uncooperative diffraction spike that prevented me from seeing the pup, however in Steve's 18", during a steady moment, I caught a 1/2 second glimpse of the tiny star! I had a great night and added 32 new objects to my collection, five of them are what I like to call "Steve objects" IC 418, a tiny planetary nebula that responds in a huge way to H-Beta. Funny thing happened, I had observed NGC 1807, a somewhat large OC then described it in my log sheet as usual, I moved on. After a couple hours, Steve invited me over to see a galaxy inside an open cluster. The 15.7 mag galaxy was readily visible, a very cool site! "what cluster is this Steve?" NGC 1807- Maybe I need to spend more "eye time" with these clusters although I'm not so sure I would have detected it in my 12.5".

A great night!

GML