August 15, 2009: Lake Sonoma

Mark Johnston

Decided to try the north bay site at the Lone Rock parking lot in Lake Sonoma area. This was a 1st visit for be because the drive is very long but I had to try it and felt the fires may give a good excuse to try that site. Fortunately it turns out nobody in south bay was much effected by the smoky skies which appear to have blown offshore for the night.

Although a lot of driving from my Cupertino location, it was nice to finally get up to Lake Sonoma, take my 360 degree panorama, visit with the north bay gang many of whom I had not met in the past. I was told it was a fairly good night by Lake Sonoma standards and I have to say that the dark West and south are key features of this site. The drive through San Francisco is always fun for me and then the bay around the Sausalito and Tiburon areas is refreshing. There are also nice vineyard sights closer in to Lake Sonoma.

8 observers were present including Matthew Marcus (mam), PeterK, Kent, Jerry, Another Mark, Caroline, and Ronaldo (all Lake Sonoma regulars I believe). Scopes were all sorts from SCT/Dobs and even a large Portaball Seeing was in general very good with the dimmer of the nu Scorpius (mini double-double) splitting but the brighter one just elongated. Epsilon Lyra (double double) was extreme clean split on both counts. Skies were 21.45 Mag/ArcSec and my limiting galaxy mag limit was 16 which is very good but not up to Lassen Bumpass Hell standards.

Started off with galaxies near Ngc5546 and then near 5142 which are starting exit for this season and I wanted to catch before they go on vacation. Moved on to Herschel 400 list 2 objects to cover about 16 of them with a few nice discoveries as follows:

Ngc5383: This mag 12.1 objects has a long main bar of about 2' length with 120 degree PA but curiously the core appears slightly elongated as if at a 80 degree PA. Another nice feature of this object in DSS and only hinted at in my 18" scope is the end of each bar has a single arm coming from the end of the arm and trailing off in a CCW direction.

Ngc5023: This is a large edge on galaxy of about 5-6' length elongated 6 to 1 or so.

Around this time Matthew Marcus shared a view of Pal 8 in his 8" which was a treat.

Next were 5 little groupings of galaxies a few minutes NNW of the head of Draco. The brightest member of each being: Ngc6307, Ngc6290, Ngc6399, Ngc6338 and Ngc6521. The most busy group within a small area would be the 5 galaxies near Ngc6338.

Shared views to look at Cat's eye nebula, NGC6543, with it's outer halo apparent object IC4677 and trailing galaxy Ngc6552 9' to the east. A 400x unfiltered view of Cat's eye was a gorgeous blue with a very nice central star surrounded by darker circle and then the 'famous' glow in light blue of the cat's eye.

Also enjoyed Jupiter through a H-Beta filter and tonights it's rings gave up quite a bit of detail as seeing was fantastic for this view. Thanks to mam for his suggestion of the H-Beta, it was ideal. My H-Beta is the Orion one.

Finished off the nights 50+ objects with galaxies near Ngc7701 in Psc.

MarkJ