An evening at Fremont Peak -- the back door to Virgo

[Jay Reynolds Freeman]

I was at Fremont Peak (near Salinas, California) a week ago, on the
evening of March 25-26, enjoying a clear dark night after a long, wet
winter. I brought my 90 mm refractor -- a Vixen fluorite with the
Celestron label -- and planned to go through the Messier objects
well-placed for spring evenings, which I had not yet done with this
instrument. I did a quickie polar alignment as soon as Polaris was
visible, and started out before the end of twilight, using my 20mm
Erfle eyepiece for 40 diameters magnification.
Usually I am too cold and lazy to look at the Virgo/Coma galaxies
till later in the year, when it's warm, at which time I enter the area
by star-hopping north a degree or so from rho Virginis, to M60 and
M59. But with Virgo only partly risen, this route was not available,
so I had to approach the area via what is for me the "back door". I
found 5th-magnitude 11 Coma Bernices -- relatively isolated in a
star-poor area east of Leo and south of the Coma star cluster, and
verified that it was the right star by noting bright M85 only about a
degree to the east. Then back to 11 Coma and not quite two degrees
south to M100 -- also pretty bright, and a good guidepost to M99 and
M98, flanking 5th-magnitude 6 Coma Bernices a degree and a half
southwest. Now back to M100 and a couple degrees further south, and
here are M84 and M86, in the heart of the Virgo cluster, and from
there it is all easy pickings. I casually noted many more galaxies
than just those that Messier cataloged.
Later I looked at NGC 4565, just east of the wide end of the
arrowhead of the Coma star cluster. Even in only 90mm aperture, this
edge-on spiral is a wonderful sight, showing as a clear linear streak
with noticeable central bulge and a hint of a star-like nucleus.
I put in my 4mm orthoscopic to try Mars at 202 diameters. The
seeing was good, and faint markings were visible on the ochre disc,
but the planet was not impressive.
Before the Pleiades set I swung the telescope there and was able
to show several observers the faint, broad streak of the Merope
nebula, at 40 diameters again. More than one person remarked
unprompted that there appeared to be nebulosity around several other
Pleiades stars in the field, and we all bewailed the difficulty of
making sure that circularly symmetric glow about a star is really
nebulosity and not dew or halation within the eye. The Merope nebula
is asymmetric, which makes it easy to confirm. We compared the
naked-eye view of the Pleiades to that of the nearby alpha Persei
association -- to my eye, there often appears to be naked-eye
nebulosity in the Pleiades, and on that night the alpha Persei
association looked much "cleaner".
I was coming down with a cold, so had to leave early. But it was
a fine night.

--

Jay Reynolds Freeman -- fre...@netcom.com -- I speak only for myself.