by Richard Crisp
Jim Feldhouse, Bill Feiereisen, and I were all up at Montebello Sat evening. Despite the marine layer working its way over the hills just to the south of us around sunset, and the attendant humidity that comes with it, the weather managed to improve as the evening progressed with the clouds disappearing, the humidity dropping and the temperature actually warming the later it got. The ranger had come by earlier and told us to not lose faith, as that would probably be the situation last night. He was right!
The skies were clear and seeing improved during the evening too.
Bill had his new 8" LX200 "travel scope" with him and brought along a spectrograph. Initially aiming at a carbon star, Jim and I got to see interesting spectral lines of that one as well as another, more conventional hydrogen star. It was my first time to use a spectrograph and I was very impressed. I'd been eyeballing the ads for the ones offered by the fellow from Hayward, and that is exactly what Bill had with him.
After the spectrograph work, each of us fiddled with our toys: Jim had his FS128 Tak with him on a Losmandy GM8 with the Gemini GOTO system and a newly acquired SBIG STV unit. I lugged my CM1400 out and my recently acquired AP1200GTO mount. I had the TV101 piggybacked on the unit.
Being the newbie of the group, I was especially delighted to have the "old hands" around that really knew what is worth looking at. Of course I checked out the usual Messier suspects such as M13, M92, M5, M3, M27 and so on, but getting tips like M17 and M20 through the OIII filter wasn't something I'd have thought to do. Hats off to Bill and Jim for offering those suggestions.
The OIII filter really made the emission nebulae spectacular for viewing. I am so excited about what I saw that I plan to image some of these objects in the near future using my ST7E etc. I am thinking of doing the RG and B components without the OIII filter and then shooting the Luminance channel through the filter. I expect that will make a nice improvement over a straight non-filtered (other than the color components) image. Unfortunately I am still not portable from an imaging perspective, so the CCD sat at home.
Jim's STV was a lot of fun to watch in action. He was imaging some of the globulars and it is nice to be able to watch the image form before your eyes and to not have to have a separate computer and a jillion cables etc all round the place. If SBIG would have included either a PCMCIA slot for permitting a Flash Card or a MicroDrive to be inserted into the STV or had incorporated one of the low cost, high-capacity ATA drives inside, it seems they would have a better product because more images could be stored inside for later processing upon arrival at home etc.
We all viewed Mars too but it appeared to me that the dust storms that I recently read about were still in force. Jim did note that there was a definite line of demarcation between one of the polar ice caps and the rest of the Red One, his Tak gave very nice views.
Later on I managed to get both Neptune and Uranus in my 14" Celestron and for me those were my first viewings of those mysterious outer planets. The GOTO feature of the AP1200 permitted me to call up Pluto, but I'd be less than honest if I were to claim that I saw anything other than what appeared to be a few stars. It was probably there, but I'm not sure I'd recognize it even if I were looking at it. Jim mentioned something about a contest for hunting Charon, but I don't think I met the admittance criteria for participating in that exercise.
Bill had his Sony Vaio computer running "The Sky" interfaced to his newly acquired "travel scope", the 8" LX200. We "coffee grinder" operators set up beside each other while Jim's quiet Losmandy Gemini equipped GM8 was just across the parking lot. Watching how well "The Sky:" worked with Bill's scope got me excited to try out my copy which just arrived this past Friday.
Just before tearing down around midnight, we collectively decided to attempt to find Comet C/2001 A2 (Linear). Jim has been following it with his binocs for several days now, stating that he's been getting up around 3am to keep an eye on it, so he knew where to look in the sky. I had planned to look for it, so I had printed out the Ephemeris (being a newbie, the numbers help me) and they got me close, but not directly on it. Between Jim's binocs and Bill's LX200, they found the Comet and recorded the actual coordinates, which I then entered into my AP mount and we all got to look at it through the big scope. Knowing that it had broken into three pieces as it went past Perihelion, I could use that knowlege to convince my compliant brain that I was seeing three clumps of it. Of course had I not known about the breakup, I'd have thought it was just one cloud of matter. Funny how the brain works.Unfortunately no one had a Swan filter with them, so our viewing was done straight.
Throughout the evening the coyotes were serenading each other from time to time out there, which enhanced the overall mood of the evening, and I saw one of the fellows on my drive back home around 1:45am.
I can't remember when I have had a better time out observing and want to personally thank Bill and Jim for their expert knowledge as to what to aim the scope at. I seem to have gotten myself into a rut over the past few months, and have been looking at mostly the same old stuff such as M57, M3, M13, M92 and so on. With the Milky Way visible in Saggitarius as it was last night, I got a real treat with M20 and M17, things I'd have not thought to look at.
All in all it was a great evening, despite the fact that it was not LASSEN!