I finally tried out the "Lone rock" parking lot up at Lake Sonoma
last night. Carter Scholz and I met up there around dinner time and got set
up for a night of cosmic wonderment. Had a great time too, turns out its a
nice spot just as I suspected. Carter and I teamed up locating the WLM ( PCG
143) and in my 15" it barely showed as a diffuse brightening @150X. Thank
goodness for DSS images! I plowed though a list of open clusters that I had
been avoiding for awhile but treated myself to eye-candy along the way, The
comet, M42, Horse head, running man, R Leporis. You know, getting
re-reacquainted with Orion. I learned a few star hopping techniques from
Carter and am almost ready to show up at the next star party without circles
or drives,,,,I feel so alive;-) It was 93 miles from Alameda and the sky was
very nice for the most part. I took SQM readings throughout the night and
got a constant 21.08 so its pretty dark, seeing was 3.5 to 4 at times.
Around 02:00, when the moon came up, I unrolled the thermarest and sleeping
bag and made my truck bed a home. Great night! Now I need to get ready for
tonight's new site, Dinosaur point. It looks like its a weekend of discovery
for me:-)