OR May 10 2026 Lake Sonoma

[matthew marcus]

It was an ideal night for observing at Lake Sonoma. It was warm(ish),
not very windy and clear. The moon wouldn't rise till past 2AM. The
night drew a good crowd to Lone Rock, including Steve Gottlieb, Muriel
Dulieu, Easswar (forgot last name) and lots more. I set up my C8 and
eVScope, in many cases looking at the same object in both. I was not
the only one to notice that the sky was darker than I usually see it
there, and not just because the summer Milky Way hadn't risen yet. A
possible explanation became clear as I drove home - most of the trip was
under a canopy of clouds and fog, so this was the Lake Sonoma version of
a Henry Coe 'black night', in which some of the light pollution was
blocked by the marine layer.

While waiting for Polaris to become visible (aligning the C8) and the
sky to darken (eV), I looked at Jupiter in my C8 and a couple of other
people's scopes. Four moons and two belts were visible, but the seeing
was distinctly soft.

After that, it was time for the deep sky. I mostly did eye candy, since
it had been a long time since I last observed, but I got a few
less-observed objects. In order of acquisition, here's what I looked at:

2903
Leo Trio
C8 only; Leo was the first constellation I could ID in the
darkening sky)
M97
Eskimo Nebula
It was close to Jupiter, and I was hoping to catch it in the
same FOV, but it wasn't *that* close
M51
Cen A
The Corvus Rule: If the line between the bottom stars of the
Corvus quadrilateral is horizontal, then that's the time to go
for Cen A and Omega Cen. Cen A was in a tree, just peeking
out between branches but I got an image. Unfortunately, I can't
find it on my iPad.
Omega Cen
This image I did find. It was a little less 'treed' than Cen A.
It's so bright that it showed up on the live image on the
eVScope.
I didn't go for it in the C8 because that scope was more
obscured by the tree than the eV, just because of where I set
them up.
4038 (Antennae)
The eV shows this as two galaxies, each with distorted arms.
Visually, it's one irregular blob in the C8.
M3
4656 (Hockey Stick)
The eV captured much more of the faint arm than I could see in
the C8.
4631 (Whale)
4449
This is one Muriel was looking at in her 16". It was described
as a 'Magellanic' galaxy, and indeed it is an irregular like the
LMC. None of us saw the nucleus in the 16", but it shows up as
a 'star' in the eV. Images from the pros show that it isn't a
star.
4460
I don't remember why I went for that particular galaxy in CVn.
It's a lenticular galaxy. Two more galaxies are captured in the
eVScope image.

M104
That was the only Virgo galaxy I went for. Not my usual MO.
6334 (Cat's Paw Nebula in Sco)
I didn't go for this visually. It was very low, but the eVScope
got it nicely.
M4
4565
M107
This is in Ophiucus, a constellation I tend to overlook because it
doesn't have an obvious asterism, but it's full of GCs like this
one.
B61
Dark nebulae like this one are usually no-go visually, and so it
proved with this object, but a 9 minute exposure popped it out. The
key to imaging these objects is to expose long enough to get lots
of faint stars to populate the field so it becomes obvious where
they're missing. Thus, a 40 second exposure doesn't show it
because the chance gaps between bright stars look like dark
nebulae.

I left at 2:30, seeing the rising moon before going under the
aforementioned blanket of clouds.

mam