by Derek
I went to New Mexico Skies last week for 4 days of observing using their 30" f5 Tectron dob. The (I am not sure what the correct term is) facility is very nice. It is obvious Mike and Lynn Rice put a lot of effort into maintaining the apartments and astronomy equipment. I flew into El Paso and made the 2.25 hour drive. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. I was able to observe the first night for 5.5 hours and was shut out by clouds the next 2 nights. After reviewing the satellite pictures and a forecast for 50+ mph winds I decided to come home a day early.
Initially the weather was bad, fog covered the area. However the site appeared to be near the edge of the weather. About 9 pm the sky cleared for about 30 minutes only to be recovered with fog. The area recleared about 10:45. After realigning the DSCs and getting organized I began viewing about 11:30.
There was a lot of moisture in the air from the fog, so when it cleared and the temperatures dropped everything that was wet froze. By 12:30 the secondary was covered with frost and we used a heat gun to melt it. However once everything froze dew was no longer a problem and I only had to reheat the secondary once, about 2 am when it was ~25% covered. The primary was fine throughout the night. I observed until 5 am when the combination of 6 hours of pushing the 10' ladder and general fatigue finally caught up with me. Some of the high points
Because of the late start I missed the planets and Orion, so most of my time was spent on Orion list of 500 objects in Leo and Virgo. Using this much aperture was amazing. There were times when I was trying to find a galaxy and there were 4 or 5 in the eyepiece. The trio of galaxies NGC4206, 4216 and 4222 were neat because they just about fit in the field of view of the 35 Panoptic. The 2 of the edge on galaxies appear to be almost parallel while the third is rotated about 70-80 degrees to the other 2. All three are very obvious and have some detail.
NGC Omega Centarus cluster, NGC 5139. Very large and very bright. I looked at this right before it set behind the mountain to the South(~10 degrees.) It was only a degree or so from disappearing, but still impressive.
The Veil Nebula, NGC 6992. One of my favorite objects. I use an O3 filter and when the sky cooperates I spend a lot of time following its twists and turns. I took a look at this about 4 am(quarter moon had risen.) I forgot to look at 6960 part. 6992 looked like a piece of yarn had been laid strung the stars. It was thick and appeared to have depth. This object was amazing, it seemed possible to look into it and was not the "smoky" appearance I see with my 12.5" scope.
M51 was nicely resolved. The large galaxy had very obvious bars and the smaller galaxy had a very clear bright center. I only looked at these for a couple of moments to check the calibration of the DSCs, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to get back to them
There was a slight aurora early in the evening visible to the north. At first I thought it might be remnants from the fog, but it was obviously rose colored and only lasted a short while.