by Bill Chandler
Being new, I'll probably stumble all over myself try to post an observing report, so I'll keep it brief and let Gregg and Shneor follow-up with the experienced details. :-)
Saturday night (8/10) a few of us gathered at a 'very' Dark Sky location, MONITOR PASS. It's located approx 30 miles (as the crow fly's) south of S. Lake Tahoe and on the eastern side of the Sierra mountains.
| Elevation | 2534 metres / 8313 feet. |
|---|---|
| Location | N 38.67560 W 119.62030 |
I arrived approx 7PM (about an hour later than I wanted). The drive over, took a bit longer than I estimated. I've never been to Monitor Pass, so my ball-park guess of "oh, it's just over the hill" was a bit off <grin> Shneor, Gregg and Jim were already there. Shneor had finished his setup and was relaxing in the afternoon sun. Gregg was busy wheeling out his 25" DOB. I pulled in next to Gregg and introduced myself to all. As I noted in a previous post, Jim had just arrived from Lassen (Friday night observing and a 5 Hr drive to Monitor pass) and was questioning his endurance to stay the night. He stayed until sundown but opted to head home. (Sorry, we missed you Jim. We'll catch you next time. :-)
I went about setting up my new Meade 8" LXD55 Schmidt-Newt (GOTO). This was the FIRST time I had it out, with the GOTO (I had the OTA at Shingletown and it worked great there), so I was looking forward to seeing how it preformed. As twilight set in, we started by observing the moon. A thin crescent in the western sky. Very nice! My experience with lunar observing is near zero, so I have no details of what we looked at.
As the sky's darkened, I tuned my attention to Alignment on Polaris and setting up the GOTO alignment (2 star). After this was complete I entered M5 (one of my favorite GLOBs) and pressed ENTER. So far so good. The OTA swung around and pointed in the right direction but M5 was not in my FOV. :-( The rest of the night proved to give similar results. Close, but no cigar. :-( I used my 8x50 finder, a lot, to track in on targets once the GOTO finished. Conclusion, this was probably operator error and I need more practice :-) The one HIGH SPOT in the GOTO of the night was NEPTUNE! For some strange reason, I hit this planet on the first attempt (yippee). A first time, for me, on one of our distant neighbors. (strange, when I tried Uranus, nothing :-( Go figure)??
All through the night, we all swapped objects and shared looking though each others scopes. Too many to list, but we hit ALL the major ones and a few more. THANKS TO GREGG & SHNEOR for sharing their experience, knowledge and fantastic equipment! APERTURE 'IS' KING :-) (but climbing that ladder in the dark, is a bit scary) <grin>
Around 1AM, I wanted to test the resolving power of my 8" SN. So, I asked Gregg to pick a dim galaxy (within my reach) to search for. He chose a close pair in Pegasus (near zenith) NGC 7332 and NGC 7339. Here are the specs:
A nice pair, separated by only a few arc sec. Since they are so close together, you can see them within the same FOV even if your magnification is fairly high.
| NGC 7339 | |
|---|---|
| Type of object | Galaxy |
| Magnitude | 13.1 |
| Surface brightness | 11.0 mag/sq arcmin |
| Size | 2.8'x0.7' |
| Position angle | 93° |
| Right ascension | 22h 37m 55s |
| Declination | +23° 47' 54" |
| Constellation | Pegasus |
| NGC 7332 | |
| Type of object | Galaxy |
| Magnitude | 12.0 |
| Surface brightness | 10.5 mag/sq arcmin |
| Size | 3.8'x1.1' |
| Position angle | 155° |
| Right ascension | 22h 37m 32s |
| Declination | +23° 48' 36" |
| Constellation | Pegasus |
Separation RA 23s, DEC 42"
After looking and GOTOing for about 20 mins, I gave up. Unfortunately, I was unable to see them. :-( and could not tell if my GOTO was working correctly or not. Gregg, first checked his 8" DOB to see if they could be resolved there. He found them, but I was unable to see what he was looking at even though HIS 8" scope. So we positioned the 25". BANG! Right THERE, NO problem :-) After getting my frame of reference, I returned to his 8" DOB, Ahhhh, NOW I see them... Very dim, but there they were. :-) I concluded it take some experience, to know how to spot these dimmer galaxies in a smaller aperture scope. :-) (Thanks again, to Gregg, for you assistance on this. That was fun :-)
I concluded the night with some high power views on Saturn. VERY NICE. At it's highest point (around 4AM) it was only 30deg above the horizon and the sky was starting to brighten. I used a 5.5mm EP in a 2.5X Powermate. That gave me 360x! A small bit of vibration, induced from the RA motor, was visible, but the planet looked pretty clear. The Cassini division was sharp and well defined. I was very surprised. :-)
A nice night with some great people. THANKS :-)
I look forward to the next one!