by Jamie Dillon
The LeFevre Commemorative Session was a gas. What was esp good about LSA was the broad horizons. First time I've seen omega Centauri; Rashad called it off. Big sucker, halfway across a 1.2 degree field. Phwooo, reading about something like that doesn't prepare you for the majesty.
It was esp fun to be next to Rashad and compare views and impressions. We swapped eyepieces, his 16mm Konig cf my 17mm Celestron Plossl. That Konig is one pretty ortho, before you even start comparing price. His wideview Intes we compared to the 22 Panoptic looking at M13, and the Intes looked good against stiff competition, didn't it?
Took those cribs right off TAC, Wagner's backyard hops to 4490 and 4449, both interesting galaxies in CVn. 4449 did look disrupted, with arms askew.
The sky was 6.0 overhead at best, more like 5.5 most of the night. The tradeoff for the horizons was low altitude, and the seeing was 4/5 max. This was in Felix, the farseeing 11" f/4.5 Celestron Dobs, using a 22 Panoptic, 17mm Celestron Plossl, and a 6mm Radian, which didn't get a whole lot of use. A Televue 2x Barlow on the 17mm was about what the traffic would bear.
It was fun to scan below 2903, just south of lambda Leo, which Rashad had said was one of his favorites and has since apparently renounced. In fairness, it's gorgeous, a big swirly spiral with a bright core. To my point, south of there is 2916 which was on SkyAtlas and turns out to be a dim tiny little sucker. I had the field, thought I saw a bit of a galaxy there. My eyes were literally getting fuzzy at that point, it being late, with Leo heading toward the uttermost West. Rashad had crashed already, so I went and hauled Wagner over. To my delight, he had to study the field to see the thing. We both caught the same PA, and that and the field exactly matched The Sky. Gotcha.
In Ophiuchus, M107 is beautiful, framed in the middle of a cross of stars. The globular has long arms to the east, spilling onto the field star. M14 wasn't as interesting as the Bull of Pinatubo, the naked eye asterism on the north end of Ophiuchus, cited by Wagner. The selfsame Wagner was subsequently getting onto me for being academic and naming these pesky things, Rasalhague and the like, when of course he is there for the purer pleasure of nonverbal observing. Luckily, Hudgins was along to hear both the Bull of Pinatubo part and the accusation of academicism. Doug adjudicated that one nicely, "Ooooh, names like Bulls of Pinatubo." This is a good sample of behavior during late night observing.
You couldn't be out with a nicer bunch of weird types, and those stars are so intoxicatingly satisfying. Good modelling for Liam. You guys were real nice to him, thanks.