by Jane Houston Jones
We set up our 14.5-inch f/4.8 and 17.5-inch f/4.5 Litebox reflectors outside the observatory, so we could contribute to the evening public program Saturday night. So this is an "outside the observatory" observing report - I only looked through the Challenger once as I was holding court at my own eyepiece until midnight. .
Seeing was soft, it was what I'll call a "bright" sky, yes, dark enough to see plenty of brighter objects but the background sky was not that dark to my eyes. LM was 5.7 - I counted 13 stars in IMO Limiting Magnitude chart 11 - Alpha CrB-Gamma - Alpha Boo.
Fog filled the valley below the observatory at times, but not the surrounding cities which seemed much brighter than usual.
The visitors last night were great and so were the folks who set up telescopes outside the observatory. There were some mounted binos, a TV Ranger and Grey Ghost - a little f/3.5 6-inch dob, a 10-inch Coulter, and a few others - maybe an ETX or something like that. Highlights through my telescope (as measured by oohs and aahs from the visitors) were the Startrek and arrow asterisms, which are my two starhops from Corvus to the Sombrero Galaxy, M104. And the first two galaxies on my version of the Virgo hop --
-- 10.3 and 10.6 mag. NGC 4754 and 4762 were good targets for the appreciative public.
I also showed M86 and M84 and the surrounding 9 Galaxy view. It was not really that dark, like I said, so it was more like a 6 galaxy view through the 31 termi-Nagler in my f/4.5 17.5-incher.
At about 1:00 p.m. Mike Koop and I walked over to the two other observing locations in the park, Coulter Row and Southwest Parking lot. We passed Dave and Akkana on their way out. There were still about a dozen scopes there at 1:15 a.m. at the SW lot, perhaps half again as many earlier but they had already left.
At Coulter, there was that 8-inch refractor, aimed at B-86, Barnard's Inkspot in Sagittarius, a really pretty view. I know some other observers were set up, but they might have already shut down when we strolled by, the sky looked quite nice from Coulter. A car was just leaving when we walked by the big refractor. While walking back to the observatory, Mike and I had to wait for a huge wild pig, who had no plans to ever be part of a combination plate at Dona Esthers in San Juan, to cross the road. Before sunset, we observed three of his bretheren through the mounted binos in the observatory. We heard others, too, during the night.
This little piggie went to the observatory, this little piggie went home (to Coulter), this little piggie had roast beef (from the trash bin), and this little piggie had none (because the last one got all the goodies). And and this little piggie jaywalked nonchalantly across the road right in front of us.
Ok, the best (only view for me) view through the 30-incher was of ARP 85. The spiral arms were wide, distinct and separate, sparkling with HII regions with the bridge to NGC 5195 like a highway connecting the two galaxies. Arp 85 is also known as M51, but you all knew that. [:-)] I know they aimed at Comet I-Z earlier in the evening, but I was at my own telescope having too much fun to go inside until everybody left. The Challenger and observatory were closed at about midnight - the operators had all been there for 9:00 a.m. telescope certification training so it was a very long day for them.
At the end of the night, at about 1:30 p.m. the best and final view through my telescope was the Veil Nebula complex. First I went to NGC 6992/95 - the chunky part, and then to NGC6960 near Cygnus 52 - the ribbony part. We picked out faint Pickerings Triangle, Simeis 3-188 in-between the two more obvious sections of the Veil Nebula, and the top part of the supernova remnant, NGC 6974/79. Then I helped Erik from SF find these same objects with his f/3.5 6-inch reflector, Grey Ghost using my OIII filter and 22 Nagler. His various filters just didn't pick up the nebulous filaments, swirls and other gorgeous starstuff. He was blown away by the view in his 'scope.
Earlier I helped Sam collimate his 10-inch f/4.5 Coulter - didn't need hardley a tweek, and it turns out that I had helped the other guy, Erick about 4 years ago to do the same thing. He recognized my voice in the dark doing my collimation lesson. It was that kind of night, a small crowd, with nice folks set up near-by, about as nice a public party as you can have. I didn't notice the cold until I started taking down my telescope at 2:00 a.m. and then I was freezing. On the way down the hill to the San Juan Inn, we saw at least 4 foxes.
It was 43 degrees and low humidity most of the night, not windy after sunset, and a great time was had by all, but most especially by those wild pigs, I think.