July 26, 2009: Lake Sonoma

Greg LaFlamme

Scott Baker and I stopped off on the way to Lake Sonoma last night and had a great burger at Fitch Mountain Eddies, a place that Steve Gottlieb introduced me to a year or so ago. Still a great burger,, nuttn changed :-) We arrived at Lone Rock and got set up. We talked scope, a favorite pastime of mine, until some other observers arrived. I wrote Steve and asking him if he had the energy to come up to LS after enduring a trip to China. I figured it was plausible, being that he's still on China-time but I was just a little surprised to see him pull into the lot and set up next to Scott and I. Animal! A few more observers were there as well. My good buddy Carter Scholz, Dave Staples as well as super nova discoverer/ double star namer Dana Panchick. There was one other really nice guy there as well but I've forgotten his name' Again :-( Early on Dana pointed out that the ISS was headed our way. I slammed a 26 Nagler into my rig and jumped on it quick. @ 85x, I had no trouble hand tracking it across the sky. Best view yet! I could see the two golden orange solar panels as well as 5 bright reflections on the body of the space station. Its looked like the high-beams were on. One of the panels was a little askew, in other words, they weren't both facing the same direction, one was a little tilted. Very cool! Dave Staples gave me a great view of Jupiter through his C8. The impact scar was very easily seen as @200x as a small grey irregular shaped mark near the South pole. We misjudged the direction of Jupiter's rotation so when we took a look a couple hours later in my 22'", it appeared as a divot on the very limb. A surprising site! Make sure you check out that scar as it rounds the bend!

Jovian battle scar 2009 = "saw it" ;-)

It was a dark night for LS. 21.46 was the SQM reading. Nowhere near as dark as Willow or "D.A.R.K" but a great night just the same. The seeing at zenith was 5/7 on the GML scale. Just about arc-second. Steve and Dana commandeered my 22" to investigate a couple of galaxies that weren't. Turns out, one of Dana's friends (what's his name Dana?) discovered that it responds to a UHC filter. Its now been re-classified as a planetary nebula! Its old ID was PGC 932285 and 932333. In my 22" @ 462x, with a UHC filter it showed as a very small, very dim, somewhat ellipse and ghostly clump of light that appeared to have a slightly elongated central concentration. Thanks to Steve and Dana, again I got to be one of the first 4-5 people to see this thing! Thanks goodness for folks who know what their doing.

After four full nights at Bumpass just a few days prior, I was content with a very relaxed session. I only observed about 7 new objects. One of them, NGC 5866 is a beautiful edge on spiral with a thin grey bisecting dust lane! (@ 328x it was elongated NNW, 3:1, bright concentrated core) I love bisecting dust lanes and shared the view with Steve and Scott.

Put that one on your lists!

GML