pinnacles midweek

 I had a gap in my work schedule Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, and with the weather clear and dry took a drive down to Pinnacles for some deep sky.  It's the first trip since I can't remember when.  I took my 10-inch Springsonian, 80mm box scope, and 7x42 binoculars.  

On approaching Salinas I noticed a cloudy southern horizon, and soon realized there was smoke.  There was none in the satellite image I checked around noon, just some Creek Fire smoke but that was blowing south.  It turns out firefighters started some break fires in the mid afternoon and the high pressure was sending the smoke west and north.  I wondered if I should turn back, but my bet was the line of smoke would remain south of Pinnacles.  Fortunately this turned out to be the case, though the transparency was compromised and light scattered off the smoke.  SQML didn't make it above 21.0, a bad reading for the site.  But I made the most of what I could.  Seeing was variable, and there were times of hot and cold breezes through the night.

I was the only one there.  A camper arrived at dusk but I had to redirect him to the east entrance.  This seems to happen every time. 

I had no particular plan so I tried to browse the brighter, larger objects.  I used the Pocket Sky Atlas and it is well matched for a 10-inch scope and the scale is large enough to help me find things.  I scanned the Milky Way, of course, hitting the highlights -- though all the horizon views were compromised.  I used the 80mm box scope in the same area, and while the field of view is really large, about 7-8 degrees, the scope itself is too awkward to use.  I was better off with binoculars.  

Barnard's E shown but not particularly well, and the amazing rich star fields of Sagitta, with the glow of M71 in the middle.  The Coathanger, and NGC 6802 at one tip as a pretty large swirl of stars -- almost like a whirlpool galaxy.  Had a nice long look at the Veil Nebula, which showed pretty well at zenith.

I looked at M31 both when it was lower and when it was near zenith.  Of course the former was the better view, as I could see near and far dust lanes, and the twists at either end of the halo.  The halo was huge in the binoculars, almost reaching the 7 degree field.  I thought I could see the greyness of the IFN to the south of M31 in the 10-inch, but I'm uncertain of the specific location.  M33 was nice, and I only got some hints of the arms.  I caught the peripheral galaxies NGC 278, 185, and 147 too.  The blue snowball NGC 7662 was a small non-stellar blue disk.    Open cluster NGC 752 didn't impress me as much as I remember seeing it years ago with the 12.5-inch, maybe I needed more magnification.  

I was really impressed with the wealth and density of stars in western Cassiopeia.  There's no major feature here to make one point their scope in this area, but the dim and similar magnitude stars are fairly evenly spread and rich.  

Once the Pleiades were up I had a nice look, the bright stars foggy with nebulosity.  M1 the crab nebula looked like a slightly smaller version of M33.  Checked out NGC 1449 the California Nebula, which seemed less bright & detailed than I remember, likely due to the unfavorable sky.  The IC 405 the Flaming Star nebula, and the string of stars in the lower center of Auriga.  I could just fit M38, M36, and M35 in the same field with the binoculars, and it was an easy sweep to M35 -- which showed the smaller cluster NGC 2158 in the scope.  

Mars was up but I didn't look, though I did find both Uranus and Neptune.  So that plus Jupiter & Saturn, and the earth, was 6 of 8 of the planets -- Venus I saw in the early morning, so the only one missing was Mercury.

I watched Orion rise from behind trees, and even watched M42 through the branches.  Even with the smoky horizon it looked good.  The Hoarsehead and Flame nebulas looked dim, though I could see them.  M42 is really huge in the 10-inch, and fills the whole field.  

I felt tired at this point so I packed up to sleep.  I woke about an hour before dawn and decided to go about out to observe.  Orion was near zenith but the views were not noticeably better.  As it grew lighter I found that the smoke had started to encroach the zenith.

It was a nice time out and I'm glad I went out, since now two days later the smoke has spread across the state, likely killing any chance to go out this weekend.

I do feel a bit limited with the 10-inch; while there is a lot to see and I should probably just be more patient, I do wish for more aperture to have an easier time and to go after more targets.  Whether that's in my future I don't know.