May 23, 2009: Fremont Peak

Dave Goggin

We visited Fremont Peak on saturday as previously noted. It was an interesting night - we got up there to find a fog bank in the valley below the pads. That fog came and went throughout the night, but always stayed just below eye level.

Finally at 2am, the fog bank started to encroach over the peak, and after a couple encroachments and recessions we figured we might as well call it a night.

Sky darkness was quite good. The clouds covered all the nearby cities, and the western sky - normally intensely light polluted from Salinas - was actually useable for DSO observing. Sky darkness at zenith fluctuated between about 21.55 and 21.65 by the meter most of the night. However, light domes from Soledad, Fresno, and the Bay Area all washed out the sky below about 5-7 deg. in all directions. Bortle 3. The sky background just didn't live up to "pitch black" as I want. The seeing was not so good, not crystal clear like last month.

We used the 235mm SCT. And stuck with 117x pretty much the whole time.

Once the usual sidewalk astronomy with saturn and bright galaxies for the crowd was done, the real observing started. First was omega Centauri which really surprised me with how big it is. The view thru our neighbor's 18" scope was amazing. NGC 5128 also was easy to see and its dark lane showed details.

We finally saw the full set of M95, M96, and M105, plus the two other gxs in M105's group. We also wanted to see the NGC 3607/3605/3608 group but didn't manage to see 3605 only the other 2.

Other highlights of the night:

• NGC 4527: We hoped to see some mottling as shown in the DSS but alas all we noticed was that the gx was something other than a uniform glow
• NGC 4123/NGC 4116: Saw 4123 but were disappointed to not be able to see the prominent bar shown in the DSS. And couldn't find 4116 although in retrospect we should have been able to.
• NGC 4273: This is a neat gx because there are 7 gxs brighter than mag 13.6 right nearby. We spotted 5 (4268, -70, -81, -73, -77) and were amazed to be able to see 4277 despite being only mag. 13.5, but the other two (-59, -66) eluded us - we'll try again at GSSP.
• IC 3115 / NGC 4241: Another pair where we should have easily seen both but didn't. 4241 was easy to spot but 3115 was nowhere to be seen.
• NGC 4535: We had hoped to see the very dramatic spiral structure. We didn't, but we did notice the halo was somewhat unsmooth. We'll try again at GSSP
• NGC 4442 group of 4: had no problem spotting 4442, 4417, and 4424 but not 4445 - I underestiamted how far from the other 3 it was.
• NGC 4654: That gx looks like a little comet on the DSS and the actual visual view of it did not disappoint. Other than omega Cen, probably the coolest single object of the night visually.
• NGC 4699: We hoped to see the texture in the halo that is clearly visible in the survey image. It was a 'well, maybe, not sure'.

I'm curious for any remarks or comments by the more experienced observers on all this.

By the way, I want to put in a positive recommendation for wikisky.org -- this has become an indispensible web site for observation planning, to preview things so you know what to look for, and to spot things to try to look for that aren't necesarily on the 'standard' lists. And the search box lets you enter M, NGC, IC, PGC, and coordinates and will take you right there. You can also compare things in the UV, diagrammatic map, IR, etc. What a wonderful resource!