Friday and Saturday nights @ Blue Ridge

by Darrell Lee


Renato del Rosario, Sandy Saniga, and I viewed on Friday until 2:00 a.m. Rusty England and I viewed last night until 3:15 a.m. During all that time, there were only two cars that drove up the road, and one was a local resident I'd spoken with last year.

Viewing conditions were excellent both nights. Renato (12.5" Portaball) successfully hunted down Sue French's planetary nebulae from a recent or current Sky and Telescope magazine issue, while I showed Sandy various sights with her new Orion 6" EQ Newtonian and my 10" XT10i. I didn't expect great views through the 6" scope, but it was great for the Double Cluster, Veil, etc. Sandy was very happy, and said she'll be content simply with viewing Jupiter from her backyard. We certainly showed her what her scope is capable of, with good views of the Dumbbell, Lagoon. M4, M13, Jupiter, and the M31/M32/NGC 205 trio, etc. It holds high power well. I was able to split the Double-double with a 3.5 mm. eyepiece (about 200X) in the 6".

Skyglow pervades the southeast and south horizons up to 20-30 degrees, but the north and west horizons are dark. I could make out all the main Little Dipper stars naked eye (didn't know where to look for the 5.5 magnitude star), so the skies are at least mag 5. The Milky Way was clearly seen both nights.

Through my 10" Dob, I showed Sandy both segments of the Veil and the Swan through an Ultrablock filter. Although I showed her Eta Cassiopeiae and Gamma Andromedae through my scope, doubles are surely something she'll be able to get easily with her scope. I was surprised I was able to see the North American Nebula from Blue Ridge, as I'd heard you need really dark skies to see it. It reached its limits pretty quickly, as I couldn't see the companion galaxies to NGC 7331. I'm not sure whether it's my scope's aperture or the light pollution.

I went back to the dim globular cluster NGC 6712 with my Intelliscope. Then I did Renato's trick with an Ultrablock filter and found the nearby planetary nebula IC 1295. It's invisible in our 12.5 and 10" scopes without the filter.

Rusty England was up on Blue Ridge Saturday night when I arrived. I led him to our viewing spot and he suggested going out farther on the road, as he'd driven the length of it and found a wider parking area. I did that, and we set up 1.3 miles beyond where we usually do (2.2 miles from the gate at the end of Mix Canyon Road). It's a much wider viewing area with easily room for 5 cars and observers. The horizons are better than our other area, and there's only a spot of city lights visible to the southeast.

We had a great evening of viewing. Rusty had 100 mm. binoculars with interchangeable eyepieces, and it was neat to put a filter in one eyepiece and to compare the views through both eyes. He was able to find M97 close to the horizon when it was barely visible in my 10", and we got some great views of dark clouds drifting in front of the rising moon Sunday morning through his binoculars.

I revisited the Little Gem, Owl, Saturn, Blue Snowball, Helix, Veil, North American, Dumbbell, M10, M15, M2, M30, M39, etc. Added some new ones like NGC 6664 and NGC 6683 in the Scutum area, NGC 5907 (galaxy) in Draco, NGC 7789, Rasalgethi, and Zeta AQU.

Next weekend I'll join you all at IHOP or ? with my imaging setup. See http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?c=20470&pid=6300 for my most recent (and best) astrophoto to date.


Posted on tac-sac Jul 31, 2005 09:06:21 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 06, 2006 21:31:35 PT