One in a series of entries catching up on a serious backlog of Astro Logs.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, 32mm, 15mm, 9mm, 6mm eyepieces. OIII filter.
New objects observed: NGC 6207
Previous objects observed: Double Cluster (NGC 884 & NGC 869), M31, M32, M110, M33, M13, M92
Notes: Catching up on a massive backlog of Astro Logs I let develop. Unfortunately, all I have are the notes I left on Twitter about what I saw. This night, though, I took better notes.
This night, I wanted to try and find a darker site not quite as far away as Sunrise. I looked at some maps and noticed a little placed called "Mowich Lake" in the NW corner of Mt. Rainier National Park that had SR 165 leading right to it, and by miles and by supposed driving time according to Google Maps much closer than Sunrise. Sounded great to me, so I headed out.
Unfortunately I missed the bit about the last 19 miles or so of the road being unpaved, and it's a washboard road to boot, so I ended up taking as much time as it would have taken to just drive to Sunrise anyway, and the rough drive knocked the mirrors in the telescope off alignment. Plus when I got there, it wasn't as open as I had thought it would be from pictures, so most of the things I was really hoping to look at were behind trees. On top of everything I didn't use the facilities at the pay station thinking there'd be some further in, and something was screwing up the telescope's balance. All in all, I was in a pretty foul mood. The search continues.
In any case, I was able to see the Double Cluster, M31, and M33 visually. With the telescope, I also got M32, the elusive (from my house anyway) M110, M13, M92, and NGC 6207, a little galaxy right next to M13. It wasn't all bad, but still another fiasco of a trip. Hmph.
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