Rich Wrote: “surfing the Wedge”. Rich, right on; that brings back memories. I used to be 8 feet tall until I body surfed the Wedge. Now I am a short little 6 footer. The Wedge was cloudy and breezy most of the night. Those who made it to the Overlook were Don Colton, Bill Biesele & wife, Kim Hyatt & kids, Bob Taylor, and Jim Gibson. We setup in the camping area. Mike Bailey and Tom Watson went out on a big flat somewhere near the Wedge. Checking the sky periodically through out the night and sleeping in-between, I finely got a rap on the van window about 3 AM and the sky was nice and clear but a little unsettled. The wind had quit which was nice. The wait was worth it. It didn’t take Don long to put his beautiful 18” GOTO Dob into action. Bob Taylor had a 16” f/4.5 (?) Dob he had made in a John Zeigler class. I had my 20” f/5.375 Dob with filter slider loaded with a UHC filter and an OIII filter and we were cruz’n the sky. At 3 AM Orion was very high in the sky. We did the usual by observing M42 with Trapezium and surrounding nebula. It was fun do dial in the UHC and OIII filter to see the difference. The nebula around Trapezium was very mottled and the dark nebula to the left (relative to the eyepiece) was very dark. Don found the Horse Head nebula, which I would have passed up as one of those impossible objects to see without a H-Beta filter. Don also found the Horse Head in my 20” scope without any filter at all and then we dialed in the UHC and the OIII filter. I don’t remember which one gave the best view but Don said it was the best he had ever seen it. I could see in a relatively dark part of the sky with a few stars around and even darker ink spot that turned out to be the Horse Head. Once I knew what I was looking at I could see that the head wad facing down. It didn’t look like Rich’s picture posted on utahastronomy.com but with that in mind I could begin to make out the back light at the edge of the ink spot; very subtle. The Eskimo nebula in Gemini was really neat; nice and bright with little sparklies ( a technical term used by astronomical offico-not-oes denoting a cool view) on the interior glowing a blueish-green. We saw the huge undulations of the Rosette nebula, and M46 with its beautiful planetary. We did get to Stephens Quentet and the nearby NGC 7320 (?). We also saw Hubble’s Variable nebula. I have been trying to find NGC 4236 (mag 10.7 22’X5’) for a long time in Draco between the stars Giausar and Kappa Draco. I started looking for it back when I equated large with bright because it showed up well on the chart. I soon learned that any magnitude spread out over a large area is a hole lot less bright and 10.7 mag isn’t all that bright to begin with. I still cherish the challenge of trying to find it in my 12.5’ f/7 scope. I know others have done it. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today!