July 16-19, 2009: Four Nights At Lassen Park/Bumpass Hell

Peter Natscher

Hi Taco’s,

I’m back and recovering from a thoroughly exhilarating trip -- camping at Lassen National Park and observing up at Bumpass Hell for four nights in a row. I was sharing a “first come first served” tent camping site with Dave Cooper at Lake Manzanita. We enjoyed Lake Manzanita’s camping site’s proximity to the park’s general store, hot showers, etc. and our daily drives to Bumpass Hell from Lake Manzanita were only 20 minutes each way! Lassen Park’s cosmic volcanic landscape by day is a perfect setting for night time astronomy activities. When observing at Lassen’s Bumpass Hell parking lot during the night, it’s as if you’re tethered into space while looking up into the sky.

We had four successive nights that offered observing I only dream about. Bumpass Hell at 8,000 ft. elev. was a lot warmer during the evening than in my past summer trips there -- with temps. remaining in the high 50’s to 60 degrees at 3am! It was almost shirt sleeve weather up there all night long. Bummer that the air was ‘too warm’ to wear my newly purchase Cabelas insulated winter fishing outfit ;)

Dave and I observed alone from that quiet awe-inspiring location on Thursday night; then Friday night with a visitor who came up from Chico with wife and small scope; on Saturday night with newly arrived Greg LaFlamme and Mark Johnston, and finally on Sunday night with GL, MJ, and 5 or 6 others. By Sunday night with all the scopes and activity there, the old Lassen Star Party excitement came back into the parking lot. The Milky Way looked superb, bigger, contrasty, displaying so much more than what I can see at our usual sites. All the surrounding dark lanes and Barnards were truly black! The Horse in Ophiuchus was happily prancing.

The four night’s Bumpass Hell observing conditions were:

• Thursday night, 2am: ~58 deg.F, ~30% RH, no wind or breeze, great seeing, average transparency because of some haze.
• Friday night, 2am: ~58 deg.F, ~30% RH, no wind or breeze, great seeing, great transparency.
• Saturday night, 2am: ~58 deg.F, ~30% RH, no wind or breeze, great seeing between clouds, variable transparency with a few clouds that passed from SE to NW.
• Sunday night, 2am: ~58 deg.F, ~30% RH, no wind or breeze, great seeing, great transparency.

All nights offered superior conditions that could not be gotten from our sites surrounding the Bay Area, including the new DARC site. Observing from 8,000 ft. elev. adds a lot of pluses. Being above most haze, the southerly views all the way down into Corona Aus. below Sagittarius were dark, contrasty and tack sharp — not what Shingletown, Coe or Fremont Peak can offer. Overhead could be spotted both the two stars within M57 and the entire serpentine shape of IC1296 nearby. The Veil and Dumbell nebulas were bright plugged-in neon through my 24 in. Starmaster using Ethos eyepieces and O-III filters. GML was seeing red color in NGC 40 and M16 with his new and beautifully built 22 in. My 24 in. Starmaster was performing to its maximum. The Milky Way was so pronounced covering much of the sky overhead it was probably hard to find a dark spot to do a SQL reading.

I can’t wait to do this again next summer -- I know Dave and I, along with Greg L and some others will plan on it. Bumpass Hell is the best spot in N.Cal to observe from :) We did miss seeing more of you up there to join us.

Peter Natscher
Monterey