by Marek Cichanski
I arrived shortly before sunset, and I set up my ED80 refractor on a Telepod - my "instant up" rig. There was some light north wind around sunset, and I didn't quite feel like dealing with setting up a GEM and my Maksutov. The wind came and went during the evening, and it was chilly, but it wasn't a real impediment to observing. When the wind was calm, it was surprisingly warm.
My main purpose was to try using a double star database that I had finally managed to import into TheSky 6. I took the Washington Double Star catalogue and chopped out all the stuff that I shouldn't be able to see in my 3" refractor. That meant unloading everything south of about -45 degrees declination, everything with a secondary dimmer than mag 9.9, and a separation less than 1.5 arcseconds. I had a heck of a time getting the columns to format correctly in Excel so that I could define them in TheSky's import utility, but I finally got it figured out. (Formatting the numerical data cells as 'Custom --> 0.00' turned out to be the key.) I was reasonably pleased with the results. I finally had a database of "everything I'm supposed to be able to split with my ED80". This, of course, doesn't take into account errors in the catalogue, etc... Now I can just pick part of the sky and noodle around, trying to split everything in the neighborhood. The statistics of the three-dimensional heavens being what they are, though, most of the stuff on the list is on the tough side. Still, it was fun to play around with.
Naturally, I looked at the moon, although it wasn't my main target, believe it or not. As a dedicated moon-head, I'm mostly jonesing for late winter and spring, when the waxing moon will be much higher in the sky. Still, it looked nice in the ED80 shortly after sunset. The phase was almost identical to the one that I described in a moon OR back in January:
The big peak in the Haemus Mountains was even visible in the same was as it had been back in January.
Jerry Elmer arrived shortly after sunset, and we had a nice long session of bagging double stars and DSOs with the ED80. The moon washed out the sky pretty well, of course, but we were still able to find a fair amount of stuff. Jerry pointed out some nice double stars in Capricornus and Auriga, as well as some NGC and IC objects near the Messier open clusters in Auriga. I tell you what, Jerry knows the sky! You want to observe with someone who really knows where stuff is, Jerry's your man. I have a long way to go to catch up.
We managed to bag an IC in Auriga, which was pretty neat. If I recall correctly, we may have had the OIII filter on for that one. Jerry found the area of the Witch Head nebula, and it seemed like we were both able to perceive a little something there with the OIII filter. Not bad for a 3" scope. We also had some fun with wide-field views. First, this involved solving a problem with the ED80... The focuser is great, basically a crude Crayford-style setup. However, whenever the scope is tilted up to any significant altitude, it can't handle the weight of a heavy eyepeice like a 22mm type 4 Nagler or a 31mm type 5. I had considered trying to buy lighter eyepieces, maybe something like a 19mm Panoptic. Turns out that a 10-cent mini bungee cord solved the problem. I hooked it to the finder bracket and the focuser axle, and put it around the back of the diagonal. Problem solved. Can't even hardly see it in the dark. Hello, Terminagler views! We were able to see the Double Cluster and Stock 2 (the 'Muscleman Cluster', which turns out to be different from the 'ET Cluster') in the same field of view. Neat! We also saw M36, M38, and one or two NGC open clusters in a single 22 Nagler field. Ah, the pleasures of 'spacewalking'.
Jerry also encouraged me to experiment with different magnifications, to see how much better the stars popped out when I darkened the background. He was right, going from the 31mm to the 9mm made it easier to see the fainter stars in the Double Cluster without averted vision. Interesting... I learned a lot about exit pupils, too.
Jerry saw some meteors, possibly Leonid stragglers, but of course I didn't see many. As everyone knows, the best place to see meteors is directly behind my head. If I hadn't been so busy, I'd have gone up to MB on Tuesday night and just laid face down on a cot, so as to guarantee a nice meteor storm for everyone else.
We packed up around 12:30 and headed down the hill. It was starting to get fairly dewy at that point, but it had been dry most of the night. All in all, a nice, enjoyable, low-key MB night. 6+ hours of observing, come to think of it. Hello, winter.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 19, 2004 09:28:57 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 21, 2005 20:23:37 PT