by Bill Chandler
I arrived (with much excitement) on Wednesday around noon. The Runway already held about 50 observers with scopes setup and covered, preparing for the dark night to come. After check-in and receiving instructions, I drove to the west side (of runway) and setup at the LAST 'vendor designated' location (furthest up the runway). I convinced my Wife (an accomplished Jewelry designer and business owner,"C2 Designs") to create some unique pieces with an 'astro theme'. For those who attended, and stopped by our booth, I hope you liked what you saw and we thank you for your patronage :-)
This was the first star party, since purchasing my 16" Nightsky DOB, and I was 'really' looking forward to some 'dark sky' eye candy. While setting up, Steve Kennedy (of Kennedy Optics) http://www.kennedy-optics.com/ arrived with his new 28", F4 DOB. WOW, what a monster. Just to my left was Bruce Sayre with his 22" Bino's. Super! Man, how lucky can you get to have 'these' large scope so close to share views with (and I took advantage of both over the 4 nights). :-)
Wednesday night: A few clouds, mostly over the eastern mountains (Lassen), but nothing overhead. I did see a few high cirrus passing throughout the evening, though. Seeing was mediocre. Lots of turbulence probably due to the high heat in the lower valley rising into the higher altitudes. Stars took on the appearance of fuzzy balls as opposed to pinpoints. I stayed on the larger objects as adding any significant power, would not yield good results. For example the Ring (M57) was very ugly at 250x. :-(
After popping around to a number of objects (mostly Messier with some Popular NGC's thrown in) I turned-in around Midnight as that cloud cover, I mentioned earlier, moved west to cover us up. (I heard later that it cleared again at 2AM, but that was for the 'tough ones' to stick out). :-)
Thursday AM: Arose at 8:30, and peddled over to the airport from my campsite. Took a quick tour to see 'who was around'. Said HI to Jane and Jim as well as Gene. I also spotted Kevin Schuerman. Kevin and I met last Aug when we (and a handful of other observers) went to Lowell Observatory for the Mars close approach). Kevin has debuting his NEW Telescope RENTAL business (Pyxis) http://www.scopes4rent.com/pages/1/index.htm
Looks like a great concept & opportunity for those wanting to tryout new scopes (before purchase) or for visitors coming to CA wanted to experience our dark sky's. I wish him the best. :-)
That afternoon, my friend Bill P. showed up with his NEW 12.5" Portaball (wooh whooo). Bill setup between my 16 and Bruce's Bino's. Wow what a night this was going to be.
The sky looked a bit scary (off to the east) as HUGH cumulus was forming in the afternoon heat. We crossed our fingers that they stayed there or dissipated as the night came. Yup, this is what happened. The SEEING was MUCH improved and we began the night buy starting on a 'BEST OF THE NGC catalog' list http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/similar/sac110bn.html
Since this was organized alphabetically by constellation, it took a bit of jumping around to find objects that were visible at the locations and times that were optimum (why these books and pubs do it this way is a mystery to me. They should list them by RA and Sub list by DEC.)
Anyway, this kept us busy for most of the night. Some were easy to locate while others were Hard (or impossible) But fun nevertheless. I'll list the ones we found on a reply to this message).
(Oh, and Bill, did you REALLY see that CENTRAL STAR in NGC (what was that one)? Too funny ;-)
In-between the NGC list, we also stopped off at many Messier objects. Wow, what fun. Steve Kennedy was also checking out some interesting objects (with his friend who brought yet another 28"). Of course we took advantage at every opportunity. JUST GREAT! called it a night, around 3:30AM.
Friday AM: Again, up at 8AM, feeling even more sleep deprived, but not letting 'that' stop me, I started out the day with a shower and some good food. Many more observers were arriving and the runway was quickly filling up. Vendors too were starting to show up which filled the vendor row area with some fun daytime browsing. Coronado was their (as usual) with a number of solar scopes setup for interesting views of the sun. Great things those H-Alpha filters. :-)
Michelle's DOB's seemed to always attract attention and that ServoCat system (along with the Argo Navis DSC) was something to put on my 'wish list' for Christmas (or earlier). :-)
Going back to Thursday Night and the BEST of the NGC CATALOG, here's the objects we viewed:
6503 & 6543 in Draco. Bill said he could make out the central star in 6543, but it was not visible to me (not sure why). I'll have to observe it again (in July). We also looked at (but not necessarily in this order) 6369, 6572, 6633, 6445, 3079, 3077, 3675, 3877, 3941, 4026 and 4088.
Jumping off the list (and getting back to objects located to the east and south), we focused our attention to the fun objects in Sagittarius, and Cygnus. After popping in the 0-III filter, I spent some time looking at the N. Amer Nebula. Nice, this was my first observation, of this object, as it requires dark sky's (with O-III) to see it well. Ended the night around 3:30am.
Friday night: Tonight started out really cool with an early find of the 'thin, thin, thin' crescent moon! Just 15deg above the horizon and 'barely' naked eye visible in the fading twilight. I've never seen the moon like this before and it was quite a treat. :-)
Using the Orion DeepMap 600 (chart), we started with some of the bigger (and brighter) objects M5, M13, and M4. M13 looked great as it was higher in the evening sky. M4 and M5 weren't as spectacular, due to their low altitude, so I decided to go back to them, as they climbed higher and it got darker. M104 was also a target so as not to let Corvus sink too low before we observed this galaxy. While looking at it, I recalled the deep sky image (by Hubble) of this galaxy in a recent S&T issue. Marvelous!
Bill suggested we try the 6309 (Box Nebula) in Oph. Wow, this was a hard little object to locate. You needed high power (while scanning) so as not to loose it in the star field. Yup, it looks like a box. :-)
Now we moved to a couple of small globs in Dephlinus, 6934 and the dimmer one 7006. These too were tough to find. We called upon Steve (with his 28) to help locate them and see if we could resolve any stars. 6934 could resolve, but 7006 still looked like a small galaxy instead of a glob.
I ended the night attempting to locate 6888 (Crescent Nebula). I guess I was looking in the wrong place because I was never able to find it. :-( Oh well, better luck next time.
Saturday AM: now that all the vendors were here, spent some time checking out the goodies. :-)
No purchases but had fun anyway. I attended the group picture as well as the prize drawing. Bill won a t-shirt, but I came away empty handed. Oh well, next year.
The focus now was... What object do I pick to show the public? As easy as this sounds (on the surface) it's a bit difficult if you own a DOB, without tracking. I wanted something that would tilt the scope to a reasonable EP level (for both men, woman and kids), should be bright enough to see in evening twilight, AND large enough to use low power (80x) so as not to travel through the FOV too fast. This led me to M5.
I was able to spot it while the sky still had that bluish tint to it (and shortly after the brighter stars in Serpens helped point the way). Found it. :-) As the public began to line up, I began my chant "This is M5, a globular cluster. Contains approx 15Mil stars and is located 25,000 light years away."
I think I said that about 50 times.
As M5 rose higher and it got darker, people really liked what they saw. (how could you go wrong on M5? ;-)
When it got high enough, I switched to M27, Dumbbell Nebula. This too got a lot of 'oooohs' & 'aaaahhhhs'. I briefly tried the 0-III filter, but I liked the unfiltered look better.
As the crowds petered out, around midnight, I took a last look at the Veil (wonderful). Then called it a early night.
It was a FANTASTIC 4 nights of observing and I enjoyed it very much. Can't wait for next year. :-)
Posted on tac-sac Jun 21, 2004 18:06:04 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 02, 2005 08:49:45 PT