April 25, 2009: the Gnome came back!

Matthew Marcus

There was a period last year during which I was such a regular at Lake Sonoma that somebody referred to me on TAC as the "Gnome of Lone Rock". It's been months since I've been out, but I finally got back there. It was chilly and windy and there was only one other party there, with a goto 11" SCT. They hadn't been out in a while either, so they were having trouble figuring out how to get the thing to align (it was a daylight-time issue), while I was getting views of bright stuff until it got really dark.

Curiously, there was nobody in "Dob Hollow". The other party, whose names I forget (as I always do), was upstairs, so I joined them. Nice folks, and obviously enthusiastic since they stayed for a couple of hours in the cold.

Saturn was quite nice at 125x. I couldn't push it higher because the wind was pushing the scope around. You could see a band or two, the ring crossing in front of the planet, and a few moons. When the 11" was finally working, they proved that 'Aperture Wins' and showed 6 stellar points near Saturn. Without a chart I can't swear that they were all moons. The seeing was much better than the "poor" predicted by CSC. Another solar-system "object" on view was the Zodiacal light, prominent for an hour or so after sundown. Their scope also delivered very nice views of M13, which filled the field of a 13mm Televue (Panoptic?). Definitely an "oooh!".

After that, we got down to some serious eye-candy consumption, with such springtime faves as M3, M51 and 4565. We also said goodbye to winter objects such as the Eskimo Nebula (a good one for bright sky) and the Double Cluster, low over where the picnic tables used to be.

The cold was starting to get to us all, so the other folks went home, but not before I showed them the M84 end of Markarian's chain, just culminating. That's always a winner.

After they went home, I worked some in Virgo, picking up some 12.5-12.9mag galaxies I'd somehow missed logging, and the big glob in Libra, and then got chilled myself and went home at the uncharacteristically early hour of midnight. I must be getting wussy in my old age!

All in all, it was great to get back under the sky. I know, I know, I shoulda been here last weekend!