by Mark Bracewell
I arrived just before sunset and set up, met the gentleman who sold me my little 80mm f/6 refractor which I am very pleased with. Before dark I used it to covertly examine the huge truss scopes across the parking lot - being a bit too shy to go over and bug those folks. I wanted to ask if the wind plays havoc with the black blankets they get wrapped in.
A neighbor arrived just after I did and kindly offered me a slice of pizza which took the edge off the wind. That, and a little thanks to whoever invented the thermos.
Pointed the scope at Vega and let it track for a while to see if my patented finger-in-the-wind-polar-alignment was OK. I amazes me that even getting the mount roughly pointed at polaris lets me track things so easily. Geometrically it makes perfect sense, but still, the reality really tickles me. I won't soon forget what it was like using a too powerful ancient brass f/15 scope on an old creaky alt/az fluid head from 1950's hollywood and trying to watch Jupiter setting a couple of months back when I got into this.
As it got dark meandered around some favorite things - Struve 2816 again, the garnet star and Andromeda through the haze. With my longest focal length eyepiece, 17mm, I can't get more than about half of Andromeda in the field of view at once. Was trying to sort out which of the two companion galaxies it was that I could just make out as a smudge to the south. Thing to learn: you need a chart and/or description which covers not only the object but also its environment. The chart I had printed just had a big oval on it. Someday I'll bring a laptop, but for now I kind of want to do it the old fashioned way as I learn the constellations.
I got on with my first Messier survey. I had printed some charts with just the M objects and bright guide stars and constellation outlines. I am finding that if I study the chart for a minute or two, and fix in my mind the spatial relationship between some bright stars and the object I am after, I can go to the red dot finder and maybe 4 of 5 times get the object smack in the field of view at low power. Sometimes I don't realize I have it as I don't know what I am looking for, and then there's that 5th time, when I mistake one guide star for another, or invert the angle and I am millions of miles off. But getting it first try is always a real pleasure. M75 was a tough one, nothing real nearby to key on. Thing to learn: look at the charts I print and make sure they have enough detail in the vicinity of the target.
M72 was another tough one - but in the effort I got a real good picture of Capricornus in my mind. M73 stumped me until I got home, as my list of M objects didn't say what it was. I should have tried to find it using the setting circles I guess, but I trolled around the area for a bit and found a little interesting cluster of 4 stars that I looked at for a while. Sure enough when I got home and checked, that was it, so I didn't feel too bad and counted it. While doing this I realized I have a lot to learn about how to move the scope on an EQ mount, especially when looking near the poles. the mount is a little stiff with such a light scope on it, no inertia to speak of when it moves, whick makes for real steady views but jerky slewing. Mentally I want to go up and down and the mount wants to go in and out and around. I need to learn what the scope is doing when I move the dec. knob with my eye glued to the eyepiece. And I should probably disengage the RA motor and use a knob on that too until I find what I am looking for.
Anyhow, I was able to find 14 Messier objects, every one I was looking for (even though counting M73 was sort of cheating): 25, 24, 18, 17, 16, 14, 107, 9 along with NGC 6356, 75, 72, 73, 30, and 32 and 110 both when I went back to Andromeda before packing up, it was much darker and really obvious what was what. That gets me to 44 out of 110.
I also went back and had another look at M8 and M20, both of which let me see the dark lanes very well for the first time at 48x. Am I imagining that one can tell the difference between the reflected light one sees in nebulas and the direct light one sees from galaxies? At least when they are pretty easy to see.
As a bonus, there were about a half dozen very bright, mostly greenish meteors, I am assuming perseid stragglers as they all came from the north/northeast.
Despite probably blinding some folks when I left a bit before 1:00 (sorry again!), it was a very pleasant, chilly night for me.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 15, 2004 13:25:43 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 07, 2005 20:58:55 PT