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by Paul LeFevre
Despite Jay's "neeners," I passed on Montebello and did some evening backyard viewing and early-morning viewing at work. At home May 12, I spent the first hour or so on Mars, waiting for more darkness. Mars was ok, but the seeing over the rooftops at home was marginal. Still, my son told me it looked like the Moon -- when I asked him what he meant, he said Mars had dark clouds. At least he was seeing some surface detail -- oh, to have young eyes again. My son gets so excited about going out and using the telescope, it's very gratifying. He won't be 3 years old until August, but when we walk out into the back yard, he starts pointing out things he knows..."Daddy, there's Mars! There's Spica! There's the Big Dipper! Where's Jupiter, I can't find it?" He knows more at 2 3/4 than I knew at 30 :)
Once it got dark, I swung over to M3...I had been showing my wife the photo of Omega Centauri in this month's Astronomy, telling her we'd see it this winter from the Philippines, and she asked if there were any clusters like that we could see here, so M3 was and obvious first target. There was a light fog cover moving in and out, but in between wisps of fog M3 resolved quite niclely, and my wife got her first globular cluster. A little more Mars watching, then the fog got thicker and we called it a night.
Up at 3:00 AM on the 13th, and I hauled the scope to my observing spot at work. Hercules was nearly at the zenith, and being in a globular mood from the previous night, I swung up to M13 (appropriate to start with on May 13th :), then M92 -- both resolved nicely in the early morning darkness (limiting mag. from this site was about 5.0-5.5). I tried to find NGC 6210, a planetary nebula in Hercules, but can't confirm that I saw this mag 9.0 object, though I thought I caught a glimpse, then couldn't find it again.
Swung over to Cygnus to find M29, then M27. The Dumbbell nebula (M27) was quite faint and barely discernable, and though it showed a bit more contrast with a Skyglow filter on, it still was not great. Back to globulars, and M56 in Lyra, which was much dimmer than M13 and M92, but still a nice, tight globular. One more swing over to M57, the Ring Nebula, and I was rewarded with a nice view of this little loop, which improved quite a bit with the Skyglow filter on.
I finished the morning by catching an old friend rising in the East, returning for the summer -- Jupiter is up! It was swimming in the thick air above the eastern horizon, and the sky was starting to lighten, but it was rewarding to see its familiar face after missing it all winter.
I've mentioned to some of you that I'll be going to the Philippines this Christmas, at latitude 6.5 deg. North. I MUST bring a telescope with me to see some of those southern objects, and I've been trying to decide how I'm going to get a scope to go with me, considering options like the Orion short-tube 90mm, or even (gasp) buying an ETX-90EC as a nice compact scope. However, as we all know, aperture wins...so I've made my plans. My 6" f/8 dob, which I built about 6 months ago and has served me very well, will be retired from it's current form, and turned into a "carry-on" truss scope.
At the same time, taking a cue from Rashad, I'll be building a 12.5" truss dob for trips to the Peak and other local spots. My requirement for a scope to take with me this winter was that it HAD to all be carried on the plane (except the 2-part truss tubes, which can go in a suitcase with other stuff), so my size restrictions are pretty severe. I want (no, need!) a bigger scope, but just can't find a way to make the 12.5" I want to build fit in the strictly enforced carry-on size limitations. So, I'll be building two truss tube scopes over the next few months, and when I'm done I'll have a 6" f/8 that will be carry-on luggage for an airplane, and a 12.5" (going to grind my own mirror -- oh, god, what am I getting into...) that will lessen my scope envy up at the peak. It should be a fun time building both of them!