by James Ster
I had taken several hours of prep time before I loaded everything into the truck for the trip up and actually had a high level of confidence that things would go well. Arriving two hours before sundown with Jake following me in, fellow photon junkies Dennis, Darrel, Bruce and Shneor were already there getting their equipment ready. Jane, Alvin, Steve and Marsha (with her friend Dave) showed up as the evening progressed and at some point fairly late into the session, some friends of Dennis and Darrel's dropped in for a visit (I sure hope that "crunch" we heard when they drove in didn't cause any serious damage to their vehicle).
I had more than enough time to casually get everything set up, including using the big cardboard box from my new LX-200 on my observing table as a light shield for my red film covered laptop. I had my new Optima Deep Cycle battery fully charged and ready to keep things running. It seemed that I may have finally got my act together on doing these First Light gigs. I had everything in hand to do it and had checked out everything in advance. The only thing left unchecked was for Mother Nature to impose her will and even that seemed remote considering the beautiful late afternoon skies overhead and relatively good predictions which we were all talking about as we waited for our first night out together in some time.
At this point in time with every thing seemingly under control on the scope front, I took a walk down the road leading up the hill to see what sort of repairs had been done since the last time I'd come up last October. It appears that the residents of the house and possible the owners of the property being developed just south of the house have been busy filling in the ruts with rocks gleaned from the sides of the road. They have started at the top of the hill where the ruts start, and have filled in about a third of the ruts down from there. I imagine they will continue this process as needed. In any case, I think we only lost two or three observers in fiery crashes sliding off the side of the perilous cliffs, not to mention the three or four who fell into and were trapped in the deep crevasses (ruts) in the road. Hopefully, those poor souls who were lost took only 2" Tasco acromats and inferior plastic eyepiece with them...... ;-)
On the topic of ingress, I do have to warn everyone about a little potential problem to watch out for. The ground around the perimeter of the observing site is very saturated right now so be careful where you drive your vehicle. While I was backing my truck into the spot right next to the rollback roof frame, my left front tire caught the edge of the road (the northern edge) and sunk down to the front axel immediately. In order to extricate myself, I had to enlist the assistance of every one who was up there to sit on my tailgate to put some additional weight on the rear tires to give them some additional traction and then I was able to back out with little difficulty. Thanks again guys!
When I arrived back from my walk as twilight was beginning, I was stunned to find my lx-200 covered in dew. The first think I noticed was the telrad. I thought to my self, this just can't be happening. I quickly walked around to the corrector plate and found it to be completely dewed up already. My confidence level just took a huge hit and was losing altitude rapidly.... As I walked around to the back of my truck I could see the cardboard box over my table sagging and mushy from being soaked. Feeling totally blindsided by Mother Nature, I immediately put the dew heater into action on its highest power setting. When I saw the little red light indicating the heater was on duty, I felt a feeling of determination growing inside me that I wasn't going to let that bitch beat me this time. Shneor generously offered me the use of his nifty 12v heat gun (which ended up being the most borrowed item this evening by many observers), but I confidently told him "thanks, but no thanks" as I knew my trusty Kendrick dew heater would defeat the evil dew. So of course, a half hour later I was asking Shneor to borrow his heat gun to finish off the fine, but slow job the Kendrick system was doing. ;-) (In defense of the Kendrick, it really helps if the owner/operator is smart enough to get it going BEFORE the dew hits.)
So, now my confidence level is soaring again!!!! I have a dew-free collector plate and all systems are go. I feel confident enough to align the beast, do First Light and then attempt my first satellite tracking.
With the 31 Nagler in the diagonal, I used Sirius and Rigel to align the scope, spotting scope and Telrad and then popped over to M42 for some First Light eye candy. While just a half hour ago, several people were getting 6 stars in the trap, I could now only resolve 4 stars and they were a bit bloated. But, it was First Light and I'll take what I got. In any case, those were definitely ancient photons I was collecting and no matter what else happened, my mission was officially accomplished. Whooo Hoooo! The rest was pure gravy.
I forget the name of the first satellite I attempt to track, other than it was supposed to be a NOSS trio. Unfortunately, while the tracking software and system seemed to operate properly, I was unable to acquire the relatively dim satellites in the very poor stock lx-200 finder scope and rather than expose myself to what would have inevitably been more failure and frustration, I abandoned the satellite tracking effort for more conventional observing.
I used the LX-200's internal data base and object filter to select galaxies that were above 30 degrees and were at least very good or better. I tried my 17 Nagler, but the skies were just a bit too soft to support 180x full time, so the 31, 26 and 22 Naglers were the eyepieces of choice for the evening. The tour yielded a very nice assortment of about 20 or 30 objects from Leo to Ursa Minor. The search uses NGC designations (which I haven't even come close to memorizing), so I felt pretty foolish when I exclaimed at one point to Bruce "hey, this looks like a mini-whirlpool" and in fact it actually was M51. It was during this hour or so period that the skies produced the best views. Structure was seen in many objects. That great edge on in Coma (Shneor, help me with this one) had a fabulous dust lane. Seeing the Leo Trio brought back great memories from past sessions at Fiddletown (this was one of former tac-sacer Art Freeman and his late son Brad's favorites). M81 & 82 looked very sweet. Near the end of this relatively dry period, I asked if any one knew where the Macholtz comet was and Dennis recalled that it was supposed to be about 6 or so degrees above and to the left of Polaris. Jake had a pair of binos and after a little bit of a search we were able to zero in on the beauty. I brought the LX-200 around and found it to be mostly round in shape with only a slight indication of any direction. In Shneor's 22" with its elegant new secondary and Denk bino's, it gave a very eerie 3-d appearance.
At some point during this observation my dew heater cable was accidentally unplugged. It was about a half hour later that it totally dewed up and I threw in the towel. Game over. Ma Nature wins, but not before I won a few key battles and had a really fun night. It was great to see everyone, especially Jane who was running around giving kisses to everyone. OK, so they were actually Hershey's Kisses, but they were kisses none the less. ;-) Thanks Jane.
& Thanks again to everyone who came up and made for another great tac-sac observing session. Collecting Ancient Photon with all you guys is simply the best way to do it. It just doesn't get any better.
Posted on tac-sac Mar 06, 2005 14:14:07 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 09:13:02 PT