I got to Lake Sonoma and found new, locked gates at Lone Rock and Gray Pine!
What's going on here??
Is this just for the off-season, however that's defined? Does anyone have
contact info for whoever would
know? Fortunately, this isn't a !OR because Little Flat was open. This is
the first area you get to after the bridge
when coming in, and it's on the right. It's a bit lower than our usual
sites, and brighter because of all-night lights at
the boat dock (all thieves are photophobes, right??), and it doesn't have as
good a S horizon. However, it
is better protected from car headlights.
There was one other person there (sorry, can't remember your name!), who had
a homebuilt 13" ball-mount scope.
It was his first scope. We had a good time trading views. I got to use my
new Persistent Thread Generator for its
intended purpose for the first time. If you don't know what that is, a
hint: it creates green light in the hand and heat on TAC :-)
The CSC's predicted little cloud cover and moderate seeing. What we got was
considerable clouds and crappy
seeing. When I looked at Jupiter at 10:30PM, I could barely see belts.
Cassini's division was barely visible on Saturn,
even when it transited.
All that aside, I had fun doing Messiers in preparation for the Marathon,
adding some notes to Machholtz's guide
with better ways to find stuff than "13deg E and 5deg N of the previous
object" as he likes to do. I hadn't
observed in so long I'd forgotten how good it feels! All the stress of a
hard work-week went away. It's
better than yoga.
See you at Coe for the Marathon - I hope!
mam
Received on Sun Mar 6 12:24:18 2005