An evening of EAA at Lake Sonoma (II)

After two weeks of overcast night skies in the city, I decided it was time for another trip to Lake Sonoma. This time I brought the camera, the laptop and the EQ platform.

We arrived shortly after sunset and there were only two other astronomers out. Out of respect for them, we didn't use our lasers. It made aiming or even star hopping tricky especially for targets in star-rich areas of the sky. Maybe a Telrad or Rigel system could help.

To maintain some dark adaptation, I tried the system wide red color filter on the Mac. But it wasn't that great since it also tinted the view from the camera.

The Milky Way was higher in the sky and looked even more impressive than three weeks ago.

It was a bit of a slow start, but we ended up seeing and photographing many targets - quite a few for the first time. We left a little bit after 2am. The moon (3rd quarter) had just risen.

Observations:

Venus, Mars and M44 (beehive cluster) between them (eyepiece only). The sky was not even dark yet so M44 was just barely visible in the telescope.
M57 (Ring Nebula) - Lyra - with and without focal reducer
Failed to find/see M27 (too many stars) !!
IC 4996 (P Sig Cluster) - Cygnus (while looking for C27)
C27 (Crescent Nebula) - Cygnus - with and without OIII filter - unfortunately didn't adjust focus when adding the filter
C4 (Iris Nebula) - Cepheus
C19 (Cocoon Nebula) - Cocoon
M22 (Great Sagittarius Cluster) - Sagittarius
Saturn - Capricornus, Jupiter - Aquarius - I should have used the Barlow. I need to stack the frames from the AVI videos captured.
M8 (Lagoon Nebula) - Sagittarius - without focal reducer (removed it for Saturn) - beautiful
M20 (Trifid Nebula) - Sagittarius- without focal reducer - amazing
M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), M32, M110 - Andromeda
Failed to find/see C63 (Helix Nebula) - too close to the horizon - sky was not dark enough
M17 (Omega Nebula) - Sagittarius (thought I was back on M8)
M16 (Eagle Nebula) - Sagittarius (thought I was back on M20)
M7 (Open Cluster) - Scorpius

Funny details:

- my friend landed on M8/M20 when looking for M22.

- I photographed m16/M17 at the very end thinking I was imaging M8/M20 (I wanted broader views of them - the stacks I took earlier was without focal reducer).

All four nebulas were part of our original observation plan though.