by Jamie Dillon
Last night was one of those nights that not only remind me of how much I like stargazing, but how much I like being alive. Watching the sky wheel by, with the Moon setting, the Milky Way coming bright overhead, sharing views of interesting stuff, pure fun.
There were 5 of us: Matthew Marcus as announced, Pete Santangeli as the token imager, Mark Wagner and Jim Everitt. Lots of ribald humor and kidding as you might well imagine. The main event of the evening, as also announced, was seeing my first asteroid. You might well ask, as several have since last night, what it looked like, and an apt reply would be that it's clear why they're called asteroids and not planetoids. No hint of a disk, just like a little star. The finderchart in the July Sky and Telescope worked well with binocs; too many stars to piece out an 8.5 magnitude point in the telescope. For the time being, Ceres is just north of M70. The largest of the minor planets, discovered just over 200 years ago.
It joins an interesting compact collection of things I'd wanted to see since I was a kid: 3C273, Barnard's Star, Pluto, and Alpha Centauri. All dim points except for the last one, which I'm way eager to see in a scope someday, it having a reputation as a cool binary.
Gazed at the Moon for a while, intrigued by one crater on the northern reach of Serenity, Posidonius. It has a flat floor, apparently filled in by lava after the impact, except for the central sharp peak. Also, with help from Wagner, finally got the pattern of Pisces straight. Lots of shared views, with Mark and me comparing views of 7027, a pretty blue planetary in Cygnus, which I didn't know turns out to have a bi-lobed shape much like a peanut at high magnification. Ran Felix up to 420x to good effect. (Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians and a TV 2x Barlow, with a Lumicon OIII.)
The seeing stayed excellent thru the night, 5/5. Transparency after moonset was around 5.5, still showing some blurring from the fires, I suppose. Matthew was showing off views of a big IC emission nebula in Cepheus, Mark was studying NGC 7008, an interesting planetary in Cygnus. I went and found NGC 7793, down in Sculptor, my last object on pg 9 of the Dickinson atlas. All stretched out and diffuse, looked to be close by. Sure enough, it's 9 mly away and a Scm spiral, no real core, with stretched arms. Jim stayed with M33, riveted by the HII regions and arms moving out in his 15. Pete was doing his incantations to the dark side off at the end of the lot.
Speaking of incantations, there was a black widow in the can as big as your thumb. We have black widows in our woodpile right out back, and they're private creatures, but this one was hovering right over the interface. Someone must be deputized to tell Rangers Barry and Cameron.
Subtle excitement, but very satisfying all around.