Its summertime and the observing is easy. Here in Northern California the sky is almost relentlessly blue by day -- and, if you have the good fortune to live in the San Lorenzo Valley -- shades of indigo-black by night. Of course, the Moon can be a factor -- but not lately. And not last night: Monday, September 1, 2008.

Labor day went unobserved in my household -- not so Labor Night. `El Marko` had decided to spend the evening touring the night sky with his TEC 140 APO. Being the generous sort, he invited me over to celebrate the holi-night with him. By 7:00pm, I was feet-on-pegs off on my son's borrowed motorcycle two-wheeling my way up the snaking ascending lane that wends a quarter of a mile skyward to Bonny Dune ridge.

Of course, I arrived early -- mostly because I looked forward to the ride up at sundown.

By 8:00PM, El Marko was setting up the 5.5 incher. 5.5 inches of pure-unobstructed aperture. Through a stable sky, enough resolution to stuff your eyes with high-contrast Jupiterian detail -- so much you despair at ever being able to describe it. 5.5 inches of pure-unobstructed aperture; on a clear, dark night enough light-grasp to pepper the eyepiece with hundreds of tiny points of Hercules Great Cluster starlight.

The sun set at 7:35. A half hour later, the Summer Triangle pierced the fading veil of sunlight overhead. Polaris peeked out at 8:10 aiding El Marko in setting up the G11 GEM. By 8:20, the Northern Cross made its evening debut. Five minutes later, the five main stars of the Lyre wafted overhead. Within an hour of sunset, 4.6 magnitude Epsilon Lyra could just be seen -- but the sky would go deeper. Within another five minutes, I could make out the Cygnus Rift in the Milky Way.

8:55PM: skydark! Stars to magnitude 5.5 in Hercules.

Jupiter hung just above the southern foliage at 8:50. Seeing some 30 degrees above the horizon was variable -- between 5 and 7 on the 10 point Pickering scale. Jupiters two equatorial belts were always visible at 150x but the planet would erratically expand as though being inflated with hot air. As the limb sharpened again, I made out the tiny black void of a transiting Galilean along the northern frontier of the NEB. The actual satellite had progressed well away from the western limb of the planet. That shadow trailed considerably -- at or near the central meridian. As stability improved, the rift in the SEB became obvious -- along with the North and South Temperate Belts. Irregularities along the frontiers of all four belts were noticeable. The eastern extensions of the two temperate belts disappeared into the planet`s globe while the western extensions were almost haughty in their self-affirmation.

El Marko and I shared views of Jupiter then took turns at the Double-Double in Lyrae. Stability 7/10 overhead - wide gaps between the closer pairings at 150x. The scope has very fine optics. First diffraction ring unnoticeable -- accounting for the high contrast views of Jupiter whenever the sky sweetened.

By 9:30, El Marko had completed his six star alignment. From that point on, his Argo-Navis 'push-to' navigation system brought us to within 10 arc minutes of anything we chose to dial-in. We tried it out on the 'Little Gem' planetary (NGC 6818) in eastern Saggitarius. 50x revealed the 20 arc second sized planetary as a planetary immediately. 150x (and later 190) gave a fine view of structure. North-south elongation, with hints of a central void. That same scintillation effect seen in the Ring annularity was also present. At magnitude 9.3, we could have easily doubled the magnification and had plenty of light to spare.

Speaking of the Ring (M57), we had no trouble seeing the vague luminosity suffusing its interior (and making observation of its 15th magnitude central star all but impossible even in very large amature instruments). Meanwhile, the 13.1 magnitude field star shone unmistakably along the Ring's eastern frontier at 150x.

Back at NGC 6818, we dropped the magnification back down to 50x then headed one degree north to Barnard's Galaxy (NGC 6822). Due to large size (15 arc-minutes) and low surface brightness (14.9) only the brightest central region (magnitude 13) could be detected under these conditions. But what light was available the 5.5 incher was up to capturing.

Had to have a look at M13 -- simply spectacular. Here the APO's high contrast views stuffed gobs of 13th magnitude stars into our corneas. The cluster took all the power we chose to throw at it. El Marko preferred 150x but for me I liked the fact that 300x filled the whole field...

At 100x, El Marko managed to capture both the core of the globular and entirety of its 25 arc minute distant 11.6 magnitude galactic neighbor to the northeast -- NGC 6207. Decent sense of tilted edge-on presentation here!

Our third planetary nebula of the evening was NGC 6790 in Aquila. Kids: Don't try this one at home! (At least without an O3 filter). This 7 arc-second sized 10th magnitude nebula doesn`t show-up as a `fuzzy star` -- largely due to the fact that its annularity lies about half-way inside an outer shroud of fainter nebulosity. Effective, the planetary is less than 4 arc seconds in diameter. O3 filter in eyepiece, we confirmed it simply because it remained while everything else faded in the FOV. (If you simply must look for it, keep in mind that it forms a widish pairing with a slightly fainter star to its west.)

The first time I found globular cluster NGC 6760, came across it with Argo looking for the Aquila planetary. At magnitude 9.1 and 7 arc-minutes in size, the cluster is clearly 'Messier-grade' and gave a fine sense of size, condensation, and incipient resolution in the 5.5 APO. We also turned up the even brighter globular NGC 6712 in Scutum. This cluster exceeds M56 in density but has fewer resolvable components.

Completing our Aquila-Scutum tour, we had a look at open cluster NGC 6664. This one was quite irregular and appeared to have two distinct regions. A bit of a head scratcher -- probably needing a bit more research to make sense of...

El Marko and I took advantage of a well-ascended Pisces to track down a pair of galactic neighbors -- NGC 7619 and 7626. This easily framed pair of smallish (<3') near-twin 11th magnitude galaxies gave a clear sense of orientation -- despite the fact that both are giant football-shaped ellipticals...

My 'boys night out' with El Marko ended with a definitive view of large edge-on spiral NGC 891. Ghostly, and diaphanous, we even got a hint of the dark lane bisecting the galactic equator.

The motorcycle back down from the heights was like a slow waltz. I've come to respect two-wheels. Motorcycles are inherently unstable. By day they are virtually invisible to other drivers. By night they can take you where the seeing is best -- but somebody else will probably have to provide the optical augmentation...

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