by Jamie Dillon
There was a blanket of high cirrus overhead as I pulled into the SW lot at 4:15, said hi to Rashad. Before very long there was a regular ole crowd there, 15 people anyway.
Interestingly there were four scopes there that were people's first scopes. A woman named Nancy had just gotten her hands on an SCT (10"?) and got fifty tons of info when she started asking about eyepieces. Rashad had a one-word answer: Pentax, not plastics. There was a little boy named Robert, 6-7 yrs old, who had a) talked his Dad into getting them a scope for Christmas, then b) dragged him up the Peak. Another fine young man named Nick and his Dad had their new Orion 8" XT. And a young Englishman named Paul had a new 6" XT (both no kidding nice scopes, clear optics, but with a literally screwy collimation setup). There were TAC lurkers, folks who just heard about TAC, and 4 bandwidth abusers.
Observations were with my 11" Dobs, Felix, who was glad to be back at the land of his roots, with a 25mm SMA, 17 Plossl, 10 mm Plossl, and a 6mm Radian. Used a Lumicon OIII to experiment with reflection nebulae. These are geared to share with old hands the delight of a newcomer at seeing objects for the first time, but even more as a rookie-to-rookie guide to navigation and cool targets.
The seeing was moderate, high winds thru the night, and the transparency was a bit better than 5.5.
M93 in Puppis was bright, a full degree across. Richard went "duhhh, one more open cluster." Now I know why, after seeing where he's been lately.
M48 in Hydra has interesting shapes, with lanes of stars across the middle. These two were my last two Messier objects in the winter sky, and I made damn sure at least two people heard about that right away.
Spent plenty of time gazing at the Flame, just north of Alnitak, zeta Ori, the SE star in the Belt. Turns out Alnitak is a triple, with a distant #3 and a close partner at 2.8", with 1.9 and 4.2 mags. Now the Flame was showing all kinds of detail, better without the OIII. Found NGC 2023 for the first time, another reflection nebula to the south of the Flame. Made out IC 434 for the first time, that wide belt of faint luminosity off the Horsehead. Paul and I took turns studying the right area and could see complex mottling but no definable shape. It was like looking at its diffuse shadow. One more thing to look forward to.
Over to Ursa Major to find the Owl. On the way I stumbled onto M108, a first: big edge-on, sharp and distinct dust lanes. At 126x I could make out the eyes of the Owl. I'd seen it thru other scopes and hadn't appreciated how big it is. There was a hint of brownish orange.
By this time Leo was coming up. Went to M95 and M96 for my first time seeing either. Didn't get details out of either one. Could only tell that they're spirals in that they both showed bright nuclei. Was going back and forth thru the field, and there were two more bright equal galaxies within 20' of each other, M105 and NGC 3384! These two really are ellipticals. Richard sauntered over, having packed up, and peeked in the eyepiece (at 75x with the 17mm), said, "Look here for 3 stars in a row off this way, then in just a bit." Whoa, there was another one, NGC 3389. A diffuse spiral, Sc, mag 12.2. Just a hint of a swirl. Nick's Dad turned out to be studying the same field at the same time. And he's just getting started, pure talent.
M65 and M66 were familiar from last spring, but now I was seeing a great deal more structure, arms, dust lanes. Hadn't been able to find their companion last spring, though, NGC 3628. Tilted more edge-on, with dark lanes. Followed the hop out past 73 Leo and a hair south, and there was NGC 3593. At 50x then 75x, showed lots of definition, tilted about 45 deg, clear arms
Great coda for a fine vacation, the 4th night out on hilltops in 10 days. Learned a pile Saturday. Rashad at one point was showing off NGC 2903, a big guy 1 deg south of lambda Leo, on top of the go-next list.