Sutro Heights Park 2/1/09

Dave Goggin

The main point was to evaluate the site's observation prospects and light pollution reduction needs in support of our dark sky advocacy efforts in S.F. It's right above the ocean coast, so no light there, but there is obviously a big light pollution contribution from the street lights in the western and northwestern neighborhoods. Excellent horizons though - basically flat from southeast to northwest.

We started by looking at several open clusters: Cr 62 in Aur and Cr 69 in Ori (ok - not great), also Berk 21. We also looked at the globular NGC 1851 in Col which didn't amount to much.

In Pisces, we looked at psi, a perfectly matched pair of stars that looked like tiny mouse car headlights thru the scope. Z Psc, a carbon star looked a bit red, but hardly the celestial stop light we were hoping for.

We looked at a few things in Eridanus, especially omicron2 but didn't see the interesting stars of the system clearly.

Gamma Lep was great, another perfectly matched double star and amazingly bright.

Some other highlights included:
- M50, rich and beautiful
- NGC 2301, a cluster with a pretty wide range of brightness
- M93, a beautiful rich cluster
- k Pup, a close, equal double star, amazingly bright
- M41, very nice
- NGC 2360, cluster with a strange 3-pronged arrangement of stars
- M67, super rich and excellent
- NGC 2548, amazing open cluster, seemed to have more than its fair share of double stars in it.
- NGC 3242, surprisingly visible planetary nebulas and quite large
- NGC 2903, Galaxy in Leo. We were surprised we could see this so easily even with light pollution and moonlight!
- NGC 1973, some nebulosity visible, surprisngly enough - thought we'd see just the bare stars - M35, excellent as usual
- NGC2244, found it by accident

Anyway, there's our report. Altogether we saw 28 objects.

Comments?