by Jamie Dillon
This is gonna be an atypical report, partly because it's from a fine photon-mooching night (Felix stayed home). Also certainly the location. You'll note the lack of hard science as we go along.
First the buddy news. Paul and Nilesh are doing just fine. Papa Joe is as brilliant a scope as ever. Aperture Man is now really and truly Canis Australis. He had four scopes arranged on a mondo Losmandy mount, wired for sound. Spent a chunk of the evening on some imager's alchemy with NGC 1977. I'd frankly never heard of the Running Man. Cool, though. He also came up with the first realtime image I'd ever seen of Sirius B. We were all honestly riveted to his laptop screen, looking at a white dwarf.
Another TAC-Souther, Bob Nanz, showed up with a Discovery 8" he'd successfully Dobbsified. My 10x50's and Liam's new Stellarscope from OPT (a nifty look-thru planispere variant) rounded up the gear.
Three firsts for me. Saw NGC 281 in Cassiopeia thru Bob's scope, a lovely emission nebula in Cassiopeia. Dipped into the Fornax cluster for the first time. It was way the hell up in the sky, and we took turns at both Dobbses. The other first was also significant: first time I'd ever dipped into a galaxy cluster with no concern for who was who. No idea at this point what fancy galaxies we were seeing. There was one rectangle of galaxies, about a half degree across. Down to the SW about a degree, two more vertically stacked, then just down SW a bit more a fat bright number with a very bright core.
It was fun picking out unknown galaxies like strange women on the beach. We did take a look at Fornax in Nilesh's The Sky after the fact, but nobody was kidding anybody. Nilesh and Bob were extremely generous in sharing views and just handing their scopes over. We all played nicely.
That very evening, Paul had taken Liam and me to see the Hale. It's been an icon to me since I was little. A monster thrill. Symbol of so many good things humans can do. And incredible in its own solid self.
Fun observing, great time with the best pals a couple of Dillons could have.