Last night I met Steve Gottlieb at Lake Sonoma and we were treated
to the darkest skys I've recorded at Lone Rock yet! Just as it was getting
dark Steve goes whoa Greg, look at that. The Zodiacal light was obnoxious
and actually intersected with the Milky Way! It was a heck of a way to be
introduced to that phenomenon.. I really enjoy that site and it is by far
the darkest site within 1.5 hours of my house. Its mostly flat freeway
driving and I can get just under 20mpg in my truck. I use less gas and have
better horizons/darkness by going there instead of Coe and the like. SQM
readings at Lone Rock by my meter are usually around 21.30 and to me, that's
about as dark as I need the sky to be to see most objects very well. On this
night, as the Zodiacal light sunk in the West, the sky darkened from the
usual 21.28 to 21.37. As the Milky way scooted more Westerly, it got darker,
it was so dark that I could see my hand in front of my face:-) Steve
mentioned that galaxies were really popping out well tonight. So out came
the meter again. I got six consistent readings of 21.48! That's like LSA
and in the realm of Plettstone/Willow springs. We looked at a few objects
together and discussed them (he discussed, I listened eagerly) I love Jones
1 in Peg and Steve showed me the other Jones/Emberson Pn,,, so now I have
the whole set:)
I worked through about two pages of Deep map and even worked in
Pocket Sky Atlas for awhile. For me it was mixed bad of objects, OC's, Gx's
a couple Pln's and even revisited the intergalactic wanderer. I could just
pick out the Horsehead without an H beta filter but with the filter, I could
almost mount that pony. I remember reading that the cone nebula was a
difficult object to see visually so I went after it! Gave it all I had and
came up with mud in my teeth. I feel I got a sense of the stars/nebulosity
at the tip of the cone but I won't dare claim it. Like always, Steve came
through with tons of invaluable information and even straightened me out on
a couple planetary nebulas. One I couldn't identify "j900" needed to be
blinked with a filter (I'll come back to that one a Plettstone) but NGC 2436
is where his help was most appreciated. I thought I saw it and was curious
why his description didn't point out that there was nebulosity around
another nearby star. This is where working along side a pro helps, He looked
and said that's not nebulosity, its stray light around the brighter stars.
Turns out I was using 78x on an object that required more like 200x or so to
see it well. We magged up and there was the planetary...Duuuhh!!! I should
probably get my objects in order by type so to avoid constant changes of
magnification / filtering. Hey, I'm learning.. It was a bit windy with 6-10
mph gusts but it never effected my observing and my scope was rock solid for
the most part. I had to clip my charts/notes to my music stand and I even
lowered the stand, worried that it might blow over. Magnification in my
scope was limited to 400x or so. We pulled out around 11:30 and I was in bed
a 1:15..
My ratings:
Seeing: 6-7 / 10
Transparency: 8 /10 ( If Steve has a different opinion, then I agree with
him;-)
Barley: Never effected my vision ;-)
I am really looking forward to Plettstone Friday and Saturday and hope to
see you there.
GML
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Received on Wed Mar 05 16:56:41 2008