by Matt Tarlach
There were two periods of very dark skies, first from about 10:30 to 12:30. During this time we looked at a lot of showpiece objects, and personal favorites like the Bug nebula and the Magnificent Cluster (NGC7789, IIRC). One highlight for me was the Veil nebula, as plain as day in 9x63 Orion binoculars - now that's a good dark sky! :)
Around 12:30 the sky got noticeably brighter and the Milky Way slightly less distinct. Maybe some thin high clouds were moving through, or wet air was settling out of the atmosphere - this period was accompanied by considerable dewing of our gear. We weren't clouded out, by any means - M13 was still visible to the naked eye - but the sky was noticeably brighter. I spent this time looking at planetaries in Sagitarrius and Aquila.
About 2AM whatever was causing the brightening cleared itself up, and it became very dark again. With the Milky Way rolling to the West it was galaxy time! M31 was awesome in the 10", with two dark lanes easily visible, and the little star cloud off at one end quite distinct, along with dusty detail in the outer extensions that I hadn't seen in a long time. M33 looked nice too, showing some spiral structure, but with hindsight it was probably a little too low when we viewed it. NGC891 looked large but diffuse, with its lumpy central dust lane quite prominent.
We closed out the night in Pegasus, spending a good amount of time on NGC7331. Making use of a labelled photo in the Night Sky Observer's Guide, we identified 4 of its companion galaxies. Then a quick hop to Stephan's Quintet, and finally I wrapped up the evening with a pair of edge-on galaxies in Pegasus. I didn't log their IDs because by now I was getting pretty gassed after a long weekend!
Congrats to Randy on climbing Mt Lassen! That's been a goal of mine for a while, too. I've planned to do it on a couple of Lassen astro- trips but bailed due to the sleep lost to those black Bumpass skies. Maybe next year!
Posted on tac-sac Jul 20, 2004 21:18:11 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 03, 2005 19:34:21 PT