by Jamie Dillon
We deserved it and had it coming. Just the naked-eye sky was worth the price of admission, throw in the Milky Way all magnificent after 3, and those occasional ground-brightening meteors. Add in genial company, then those optical devices we carry with us. Tea, sausages, cookies, pizza. Really hard to complain.
After weeks of awful weather, here all these burning pseudo-issues like how people figure forecasts, and who does what for observing lists, all this stuff just evaporates under the vault of the sky. We all talk to each other at star parties with our eyes up, tracing constellations as we converse.
Really felt the sense of community Saturday night. I drove in with a flat tire which has graciously waited till the lot to flatten. I'm good at changing tires, but a team of 4 moved like a pit crew. Phil again deserves thanks for the handy help, along with finding a tire pump from Rich.
Buying an eyepiece from Albert was pure fun. I spent the bulk of the time before 1130 in three fields, comparing a 10mm Vixen Lanthanum LV and a 10mm Radian. West of 2985, is that intriguing pair of galaxies I've been spying on, 3065-6. This is all north of M81-2. In Felix, the Radian brought out significantly more detail. Moved onto 3190 and friends, first time I've been there. Sure enough, 3187 was available to direct vision ca 80% of the time in Felix. Pretty foursome. The 10mm brings Felix to 126x, good for dim galaxies.
Transparency was remarkable, easily >6.5 in several parts of the sky. Seeing went from 3/5 (moderate) to often 2/5 (fair). And you'll be consoled to hear that the Peak was socked in solid as I drove by in both directions.
(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, testing the above EP's, spending the night with the new Radian.)
We were all huddled around Albert Highe's scope staring at this set, when the Kiwi of the North with the amazing backyard came into the conversation, and out of the blue Albert starts in, "and I quote, 'In correspondence with Jamie Dillon (on TAC) we had talked about how hard it was to see the fourth galaxy in the NGC 3190 group.'" He had printed out Leyland's Friday night report to TAC, which I hadn't yet read. Scared me bad.
Then back to the Bowl of the Dipper, great place to get lost. I'll spare you the grisly details, but at Coe last Thursday I'd expertly mislabelled the whole field I was in. Got it straight this time, around 3610 and 3613. Really visually confusing, comparing last week's night of mediocre transparency and OK seeing, with last night of great transparency and crappy seeing. Every single object looked very different. Interesting project this Bowl.
Revisited the whole string of galaxies going north from M105. 3338 was barely there, which had struck me a bright fat spiral with a long dust lane, a month ago at Dino. In fact, I asked Albert for help finding it. Naturally Leyland was revelling in this same galaxy from his yard Friday night.
By that time it was around 1 am. Had had fun showing Maria and Glenn some angles in downtown Virgo. Time for glitz. Turned my new eyepiece on M13, first view this spring. M13 is one of the objects I got a telescope for, having seen it in 1980. Not easy to forget. Oh man. Ran up to M5 for a while, then to M3. Sat and stared at the Milky Way then had Albireo for dessert. By the time I was packed up, the only other soul awake was Marsha, way over in the murk to the West in Virgo. We'd all had fun.
Plenty new faces to me, some brand new observers, some old hands I got to meet. And Newquist back after months of inquisitorial work demands. Nilesh back in commission. Some crew.
More, more!