May 17, 2009: Fremont Peak - Dodging the Skunk

Rob Enns

Due to the "lucky" circumstance of a forced company shutdown this week, I had no work commitment on Monday morning. So I decided to head up to Fremont Peak for a little Sunday night observing session.

Los Gatos was sweltering 96 degrees when I left at 6pm. I arrived in the park at 7:30pm, after a short stop at the Windmill Market in SJB for provisioning. The temperature was a balmy 74 degrees, and it stayed warm all night, never dropping below 69 degrees. I observed in a t-shirt and shorts--one of the great benefits of Bay Area summertime observing.

I had noticed some clouds far to the South East as I left LG and they slowly crept closer to the peak as the sun set. Saturn was beautiful and solid as a rock at 261x in the evening twilight, but it was not long before the clouds covered 80% of the sky. By 8pm I was convinced I had chosen the sole Bay Area observing sight that would be clouded out that night. I was bummed, but decided to wait until 10pm before calling it a night.

My astro mojo must have been working, because by 9:30pm the sky was mostly clear and I was up and running. Skunk-out averted. The transparency wasn't great, it wavered between fair and good all evening. I observed with a 16" Plettstone (the 50% art, 50% science, 100% fantastic Highe design), and mostly a 7mm T6 Nagler eyepiece. As is my habit lately, I didn't hook up the DSC... just pure commando star hopping, ma'am.

My project for the night was to observe 20 remaining objects of the H400 and I'm pleased to say I was able to complete my H400 project last night. After a celebratory Clif bar and drink of water I hit some of the big money Messier objects: M104, M5, M13, M57, and dallied in Corvus for a while on the planetary NGC 4361. After a steady diet of dim H400 galaxies there's nothing like a good long drink of M13!

I wound up the observing session shortly after midnight, and made it home into bed by 1:45am. The drive was uneventful except for one big mean looking wild pig that felt some ownership of the park road. After some careful negotiation he moved on and I continued down the hill.

One more note: For this session I printed out some of the "Intermediate Set B/C" charts from the Triatlas free star atlas (http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/triatlas.html). This is a great set of charts and made for easy star hopping and object identification even in crowded Virgo. Recommended.

Clear skies, TACos.

Rob