October 15/16, 2009: Plettstone

Greg LaFlamme

Michelle and Paul were again, wonderful hosts. I can't say enough about the Plettstone experience. Even the doggies had fun. Pepper and Abagurl greeted me with puppy-smooches and nudges. Friday afternoon, Michelle, Albert and I went into Mariposa for lunch in a charming small town restaurant. It had a 360 degree country-scape wrapping around the dining area complete with an electric locomotive. It was fun to watch while eating my cheese steak. That night Michelle made pot-roast complete with veggies and biscuits :-) It was an unexpected and outstanding meal. Thanks Michelle!!!

As she said, the seeing was very steady. In all three of our scopes (AP 130, 20" and 22" Newts) Jupiter's moons were literally discs! I've heard others mention this before but had never noticed it until last night. You could easily judge the size of each moon as well as their respective colors. We were also treated to a transiting Ganymede. I'm sure many of you saw it as well. The large grey and sharply defined disc showed well against Jupiter and Albert kept tabs on its direction. Once it pulled away from the limb, it lit up like a star. I went after many little galaxy groups in Pegasus, Perseus and Pisces. I knocked off many very dim IC's, MCG's and UGC's. Albert and I were each able to reach a NELM of 6.8 in Triangulum using a chart that Mark Johnston made for me. The magnitude 7 star would blink on and off with the seeing.

Albert's 20" f/4 low-rider is amazing. In the eyepiece there isn't much difference between a 20 and a 22" but there are major differences between our scopes, weight being the most notable. Its 45lbs lighter than my already very light 22" and it moves like butter. His eyepiece is angled downward 17 or so degrees rather than straight out like a standard Newtonian. With his scope pointed to zenith, the eyepiece is pointing downward toward my chin rather than my forehead! It's very comfortable in use and I'll bet this is a design choice that others will follow. We planned for three nights but the weather reports for Saturday night looked poor. We packed up and took off after drying out our gear.

Thanks again to Paul and Michelle for the hospitality and letting me join them.

GML