IHOP, 5/28

by Shneor Sherman

I arrived at the site about 6:20 p.m. to see clouds covering 3/4 of the sky, but slowly clearing to the North and East. By 9 p.m. the skies were completely clear, except for the extreme eastern horizon. I had hoped to test some new equipment, but the electronics appeared to fail and after several attempts, I gave it up.

Jake Burkhart has already posted some details of the evening, which I'll try not to repeat. However, although the seeing was average (maybe a bit above average in a few spots) at best, the transparency was excellent. The Milky Way was visible in Scoprius and to the southwest of Cygnus, with quite a bit of detail visible to the naked eye. Transparency was very good to excellent in most parts of the sky until moonrise (at 1:25 a.m.).

Equipment:
22" dob on equatorial platform
30mm Widescan II+visual paracorr
13mm Nagler
Denkmeier Binoviewer (Standard)
30mm Rinis WideFields
Denkmeier II Binoviewer (Gene's)
24mm Panoptics (Gene's)
Lumicon OIII Filter
Thousand Oaks OIII Filter

One highlight of the evening was the best view of Omega Centauri I have ever had in the Northern Hemisphere. The view at about 184x using a 13mm Nagler Type 1 was simply spectacular, as the globular filled a huge portion of the field. The edges were rether sharply delineated, and it appeared to be resolved to the core, with a granulated appearance. It's amazing how steady and clear the image was, though it appeared to be about 3 degres above the horizon (no doubt to refraction).

Gene Kahn had brought along a pair of Denkmeier II Binoviewers, equipped with 24mm Panoptics. We compared to my Denk Standards, and no doubt the Denk IIs give a crisper image. We swapped eyepieces as well in both binoviewers, and while my $29 30mm Rinis gave a slightly larger true field of view, the Panoptics gave a brighter, more detailed and contrasty image. Nevertheless, we had some memorable views with the binoviewers including the Veil, M27, M16, M17, M82 and perhaps some additional objects.

Also had a view of NGC5128, the Hamburger Galaxy, though surprisingly it did not seem as crisp four degrees higher then Omega Centauri. Viewed various galaxies in Leo and Virgo, a number of globulars and nebulae and even Jupiter early in the evening. Also had a very nice view of the Bug Nebula,

I did search for the Centaurus Galaxy Cluster, but was unable to locate it. That will be my first priority next Saturday night (as I have only hasd a few hours' sleep, I decided to spare the driving public the threat of muy driving with insufficient rest this evening).

All in all, the night was much better than we had any right to expect given the weather and even the CSC forecasts.

We welcomed Mike with his new 11" Celestron SCT; it appears he was unprepared for the cold weather and had to leave around midnight as a result. This is the first night I can recall in the last four or five years that dobs were not a majority of telescopes. Incidentally, it was so cold that when I left I had to scrape frost off my windshield. There was some dampness during the evening, but it only condensed on tables, chairs and charts, not at all on optics.

I am really glad I decided to view at IHOP Saturday night. There was relatively little light pollution from Sacramento, and the skies resembled those at Shingletown after midnight.

Posted on tac-sac May 29, 2005 20:18:32 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 20, 2005 14:00:52 PT