by Marek Cichanski
Got to MB around sunset, set up, hinked around with the sling, and then got collimated with a minimum of fuss. Astro twilight came on, and the game was afoot...
My plan for last night was to log all of the Messiers that precede Leo in the Messier Marathon. That way, if the early hours of my marathon attempt get thwarted this weekend (clouds, equipment problems, etc...), I'll at least have the early stuff in the bag. I had already managed to log M74 and M77 last week. I used some new 'DSO Log Forms' that I had drawn up in Adobe Illustrator. They make it pretty easy to log DSOs, simply by circling stuff (scope type, object characteristics, etc...) and filling in blanks (time, date, etc...).
The plan worked pretty well, and I think I got all of the pre-Leo stuff: M31, M32, M110, M103, M52, M76, M34, M37, M36, M38, M45, M1, M42, M43, M79 (remarkably well-resolved despite being almost on the horizon), M41, M78, M46, M47, M44. I didn't bother logging Messiers in UMa, though, figuring that it would be higher later in the night. Whew! The real marathon will be a job of work!
As I was finishing up with M46 and M47, Gary stopped by with his TV-85, and we observed together for an hour or so. It was eye candy time, and we looked at Saturn and some more Messiers. I absolutely love this time of year, because all of this great spring and summer stuff becomes well-placed around midnight. It really makes you feel like spring and summer are finally going to come. Too much good stuff! I redlined the fun meter on spring galaxies: M95, M96, M105, M65, M66, the Leo Triplet galaxies, M51 (spiral arms nicely visible with averted vision), M81/82, M104 (killer dust lane!), and NGC 4565 (ditto). It was fun-hog city, finally wielding some decent-sized glass of my own. When I went to Markarian's Chain, I was blown away by the profusion of galaxies that marked the start of the chain. Eight galaxies in one field!
I finished off with M3, which makes a great prelude to summer. Then a quick look at Jupiter, then time to break down. Hit the road at 1:10.
Conditions were pretty nice last night. Didn't get fogged out. Just the gentlest of breezes. Some cirrus drifted by, but never any big deal. Nice transparency, too. I used the "BS" charts from the H-B atlas to estimate the limiting magnitude. I think that this will be THE way to go. My limiting mag estimates from the Finnish triangles are wildly inconsistent. But with the H-B star magnitude maps, it's easy peasy. I just looked at the map of the CMa / Ori / Mon area, and saw that nearly the dimmest stars visible were around 5.4. Bingo, mag 5.5 skies. Like falling off a log. Seeing was pretty nice, too, around 4 out of 5 on my personal scale. Had some nice Saturn views. Dew was minimal, I never had any on my optics, although it felt a big humid at times. A few mosquitoes, but not bad.
Conditions were good down to the horizon, as noted by Gary when he watched the Pleiades set. He had them nicely framed in his TV-85, and they hung right above a bush, nice and bright and contrasty. Almost no horizon murk.
And while driving down the hill at about 1:15, I saw that it was almost a Black Cloud Night. The eastern sky had gotten nicely dark around midnight, and and made the views of the spring galaxies that much better. Still some light dome, but noticeably reduced. On the way down, though, I saw that Silicon Valley was nearly gone under the fog. I cursed myself for packing up as early as I did. Oh well, I guess I have to get SOME sleep.
I'd recommend getting on it this week, if this thin-but-dense marine layer holds. Last night had pretty nice conditions by MB standards. I'll probably shoot for going up again on Wednesday.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mar 08, 2005 02:08:58 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2005 09:31:50 PT