Friday night at Fiddletown

by Rashad Al-Mansour


At the last minute I decided to headed out to the Sierra foothills for two nights of astronomical observations. After packing my gear I hit the road.

Whenever I observe at Fiddletown I enjoy taking the slightly longer but much more scenic route to get there. Driving Hi-way 88 and 49 especially in the spring is really very beautiful, with blooming fruit trees, grape vines and wild flowers all along the way.

Once on Hi-way 49 you are deep in the Motherload and the names of some of the places you pass evoke stories from history books, Western novels and T.V. Names like Sutter Creek, Drytown and Whisky Flats gives one the feeling that like astronomy, you are not only traveling though space but also back in time. One reason for this is the fact that many of the buildings you see on the way were built in the 1850's.

I made good time, so I stopped at the Pokerville market to pick up some ice and a few extra snacks.

When I arrived at the observing site I was greeted by a deep blue sky, a lush green field pot marked with thousands of white and yellow wild flowers. "Man, is heaven or what!"

I got to work setting up camp. After pitching my tent and setting up house keeping I set up my Equipment.

Blondie is my 12.5 inch f/4.8 ATM truss tube Dobs. My new scope, Tobor the Great is a Meade 8 inch f/10 LX 90. With this scope I only used one eye piece, the TV Zoom 8-24mm plus a 2X Barlow. I used various EP's with the Dobs. From 5mm to 32mm. My books and charts consisted of The Night Sky Observers Guide, Norton Sky Atlas, and a printout of the ARP Galaxies from the Shapley-Ames catalog and since the Moon would not set until 11:15 I also had my copy of Rukl the Moon Atlas.

Conditions:

Low temperature for the night was 52 degrees with 54% humidity. Sky conditions were very good. Transparency was near 9 and the seeing was 8+, well at least part of the night, more on that later.

Observations:

I started with the Moon. Using Tobor the Great. My first peek through the EP confirmed my expectation of a good night. The image 83X was rock solid and when I cranked the throttle on the TV Zoom and went to 250X at the 8mm setting, again a rock solid image. Not until I was at 500x did I start to lose image quality.

Observing the Moon with a good scope a good eyepiece on a night with these kind of conditions is a real kick!

I started in the area around Theles, (Rukl map 6) the topography in this area interesting. Many parts resemble rolling hills contrasting with steep canyons with the Rima Gautner seaming to flow into a dry shallow lakebed. Using Tobor the Great to navigate across the face and down the terminator was a pleasure. At 2X the sidereal rate it was like drifting over a coral lagoon in a glass bottom boat. The response from the hand paddle was smooth and immediate. As I glided south I stopped to admire Atlas, the detail was shocking. I saw way more than is indicated in Rukl's map 15. The landslide area showed lots of rubble around the craters NW wall. At 250X I followed Rima G. Bond to Rima Chacornac and then to Rima Littro, this is in the area of the Apollo 17 landing site Near Mons Vitruvius (Rukl map 25) and while in the area I took in the sights around Plinus and it's Rimae, very nice indeed. I then moved on to Theophilus and Cyrillus a majestic view! Grand jagged canyons with steep mountain peaks. Continuing south I ran into Rupes Altai, (map 57) it looked like a bright new super Hi-way, so being a Californian I jumped on it. I stopped briefly to count 12 craterletts in Fracstorius (Rukl map 58). My Lunar excursion ended with Maginus and Moretus, their steep walls and cliffs are a standout feature.

Another reason for going to Fiddletown was I wanted to get one last look at Jupiter and Saturn before day saving time took effect. They did not disappoint.

The views I had were enough to last until they come back next year.

Jupiter yielded 11 clear cut bands. White ovals in the S. Eq Belt were promenate, one large barge was observed drifting from the N.Eq. Belt in the Eq. Zone. The N.N. Temperate Belt and the N. Temperate Zone stood out very well. And it took a while to see a definite split between S. Polar Region and the S. Temperate Zone.

Saturn was just a jewel! Cassini looked like blacktop road all the way around, and the Crepe was easy I also counted 4 band on the golden globe.

By now the Planets are heading into the soup on the horizon, but the Moon is still bright, casting wired shadows all over the place. Undaunted, I head into deep space.

Because of the Moon's brightness I started with bright deep sky objects and compare views between Blondie and Tobor the Great. I was in Leo looking at the good stuff and some dim stuff. I was surprised see with direct vision NGC 3419 a13.mag Galaxy with Tobor the Great. I was having fun now!

And God said to Noah, "No more water, the Fire next time!"

A good deep sky observing technique for observers using motor driven scopes, is to stare at you're your chosen object for a long time, 3 to 5 minutes without moving your eye. It's not easy to do at first, but with practice it can yield allot of detail from dim objects.

With this in mind I ordered Tobor the Great to train his eye on M66 in Leo. Without hesitation the mighty robot quickly zeroed in on its intended target then settled in awaiting new orders. Even with the moons interference I was pleased with the amount of detail I was seeing and could not wait until moonset. With these sky conditions I was going to have an excellent night!

I was facing SSW during my inspection of M66, as I sat upright after my extended view I saw something in the corner of my left eye, I turned to look eastward and almost fell from my observing stool! I stood up in total shock, mouth wide open, not moving for two minutes or so. Before me were 3 pillars of bright crimson fire 5 degrees wide, between them were two columns of shimmering turquoise about 2 degrees wide! It appeared as though the Sierra Nevada range was going up in flames.

I used a quote from the Bible to start this part of my report because it was one of the many things that crossed my mind during the next few minutes. Another was from Dante's description of the entrance to hell, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Earlier in the week I had been observing the Sun and it's enormous spots. I knew there was a prediction of a massive ejection, but I paid little attention to the report that an Aurora would result, thinking I would be to far South to see anything. Boy, was I wrong!

As I watched, a large bright gray blue oval appeared in the NE. It looked as though a second moon was rising! The light dome it created was three times as large as the light dome that the city of Sacramento casts NNW. Suddenly this bright spot started to shimmer and cycle colors from blue gray to violet. It then started to narrow and elongate vertically until it formed another turquoise column, and next to it another panel of bright Crimson formed. Over the next several hours this pattern repeated itself until 270 degrees of sky, from Zenith to the horizon was filled with 10 degree wide crimson panels separated by 3 degree wide turquoise columns. Imagine that you were holding a gigantic crimson umbrella overhead, with the turquoise pillars representing the umbrella's ribs, that was the sensation one felt because the turquoise pillars seamed to all converge at zenith. And looking south, from the horizon to near Zenith a 90-degree wide section of sky was almost ink black. In the middle of this blackness sat the constellation Virgo with all its galaxies just waiting for my inspection

One of the highlights of the night was looking at M51. The image of this galaxy was completely transformed through this crimson veil. It had pink spiral arms and maroon dusk lanes; and the H2 region was a bright red. This was like winning the lottery, because I was the only one there!

After the Moon went down this show got even better! Now I could see this curtain of color start to shimmer in a sine wave type pattern. I watched as ripples of colored light traveled right around this celestial dome, I felt like I was the center of the Aristotelian, Ptolemaic cosmological model!

What a night!

I spent the next few hours roaming around in Virgo and enjoying the cosmic fire works that lasted until about 2:30 - 3:00 am By that time I had almost all the sky back with just a few little puffs of crimson scattered in the north. I spent this dark time going after ARP galaxies and observing Mars, but that's another story. I headed for my tent at about 4:30. By the time I was wrapped warmly in my sleeping bag I was dreaming of the wonders that would come tomorrow.

P.S. I mentioned earlier that I was alone. That statement was not entirely true. There is a neighbor adjacent to this observing site. The man who owned it was a nice old guy, he was getting on in years and lived there with his wife. Sadly she was killed in a car accident around Christmas. Because of his age Joe's children believed that it was best for him if he moved closer to where they live, they didn't think he could make it alone in such a remote spot. So the property was sold.

The new owners waved at me as I drove up, and after I set up my gear I went over an introduced my and invited them to looks through the scope later in the evening.

They had not come out of the house before the Aurora started and after gawking at this amazing sight for about 5 minutes I ran to their door knocking loudly and yelling, "you got to come out and see this!" It was nice to have someone to share this with.

So I think we really lucked out. The new neighbors are great people! They love peace and quiet, and after a few hours with me over the weekend, they LOVE the dark skies. I wouldn't be surprised to see them setting up their own scope sometime soon.