by John Gleason
I would not call it the night of the decade, but it was decent given the poor weather of late. The night was pleasant, even though an old C14 set up next to me that would have yielded good images if the seeing had allowed. With my superior 6-inch AP refractor and binoviewer I was disappointed with the views of Mars most of the night. Clearly, the seeing was better on the hill by the observatory where even a "water damaged" C8 provided better views of Martian surface detail and high contrast over the C14 and AP 6 . Grrrrrrr.
By 1: 30 am, things had changed as seeing had improved. Combining a new 2X AP barlow with 7mm Naglers in the Zeiss binoviewer, I was treated to very nice high resolution views of Mars. Subtle shadings and salmon colored features were easily seen -- even a slight darkening along the rim of the tiny north polar cap was visible. . Still, I have seen much better atmospheric steadiness at the Peak, and no commercial instrument could match the view of Mars through the 30" Challenger reflector stopped to 10".
By 2:30 am most of my observing companions had left or had gone off to sleep. At 2:37 am, an estimated - 8 mag bolide fireball exploded directly at the zenith, followed by very loud hoots and yells in Coulter camp. Two minutes later in the dead silence behind the Ranger's house, I heard the faint rumbling sound of thunder emanating from the sky above. Given the two minute delay, I would give a rough estimate that the bolide exploded some 25 miles above us. That was an astronomical first, for me at least. Another astronomical first for me was NGC 4700. A 12.5 mag galaxy, 5.8 arc minutes in Virgo. Dave North and I struggled to find it in the 6-inch but succeeded using a little averted imagination to see this tiny sliver of galactic light
The absolute highlight for the evening however was the viewing of Robert Hoyle's collection of astrophotography taken through the 30" Challenger. His M42 was drop dead gorgeous showing color and detail that I have not seen done by an amateur before. But if that wasn't enough, his NGC 253 galaxy image was even more impressive with fine galactic core detail. All were analog color prints with no digital enhancement performed. In fact, I doubt very seriously if digital enhancement would improve these images. What would make an improvement, would be a squaring of the camera to the focal surface of the telescope. Stars were soft and elongated, favoring one side of each image. Plus, the 30-inch mirror is very dirty. Rob Toby, are you reading this? With a few minor tweaks, the Challenger could be made into a fine deep sky photography platform.