MB Best night ever

by Leonard Tramiel

The evening started out less than promising. The first views were of the thick crescent moon. The seeing was so bad that it wouldn't focus. This was on top of the "rubber sheet" or "swimming pool" appearance that made everything seem to warp like a cheap special effect.

I'm not sure when I first noticed it but the sky got MUCH darker. It didn't look that dark but there were just LOTS of stars, even to my nearsighted eyes. The light dome was also noticeably different than usual. It was lower than usual in the northeast and the extension in the southeast was just GONE. As we paid more attention, we noticed the edge of it recede slowly north.

I took advantage of this and looked at the Lagoon, Trifid, Swan, Eagle, Veil and Helix nebulae with an OIII. They were great.

The M17 was rare treat. I have never seen to much faint nebulosity around the central swan shape. Take a look at: http://www.seds.org/messier/Pics/More/m17wp.jpg The parts of the nebula that appear nearly white in the photo were bright in the eyepiece but most of the rest was visible as well. The texture was gorgeous. Thin wispy tendrils with subtle brightenings extending far out from the swan shape. Really lovely.

The lagoon had some surprises as well. There were sharp edged, black areas in the faint nebulosity looking a lot like: http://www.seds.org/messier/Pics/More/m8bw-wp.jpg.

Next stop, the Veil Nebula. It was past the zenith by then but still very high. In my 12.5" f/5.1 using a 32mm Questar Brandon and the OIII I could trace the full loop and see the central parts as well.

The Helix was still pretty low in the southeast near the edge of what would usually a bright area of sky. Not last night. The sky was dark there. It was easy to see with the OIII and I could barely pick it out even without the filter.

We also did a survey of globs around the southern sky. The highlight was M30. Although it look that way in any of the pictures I found the visual appearance is very asymmetric. A most unusual glob.

On the way down from Montebello there are a few turns were you usually can see the lights of the valley spread out before you in all their "splendour". Last night these places were dark. Pitch dark, black, no light at all. At the far edge, near the horizon, there was a faint red glow. It couldn't be a huge power outage because there was nothing on KCBS. I looked down-right strange.

What a night!