by George Feliz
There were many folks and scopes around, but I stayed with a half dozen folks at the western side of the lot. The cast included Peter with his 15" Discovery (for shredding double stars), Marek and the 18" Mobsession (providing the obligatory aperture), Dave and Akkana with 12" and 8" dobs (sharing experience and skill), Pentti with a 5" Mak (provider of enthusiasm) and yours truly with a 10", f/5 homebrew dob.
Right off the bat we had a thoughtfully provided shadow transit on Jupiter to entertain us while we waited for dark skies. As it got darker Peter started ripping apart helpless double stars and proclaimed the seeing to be Good. Starting easily with the double-double, other favorites such as Nu Sco, Delta Cyg, and Epsilon Boo kindly separated in the eyepiece. Peter starting working on the sub-arcsecond pairs at which point I judiciously started finding some less challenging targets.
I had planned on looking at several of the objects from Sue French's August column, "Deep-sky Wonders" in Sky and Telescope. There were many planetaries, which are not my usual target of choice, but I was game to try. A quick diversion on the list was V Aquilae which is a pretty carbon star which was orange to my eyes. That created a quick detour to T Lyrae for a comparo. T wins in redness, loses in brightness, and is tougher to find. Both carbon stars are worth the try. If Joe Bob had been there, he would have said "check them out".
My first PN of the night was NGC 6751 at mag 11.9 which was easy to find near V Aquilae. It had foreground stars on the East and West as bookends. Dave and Akkana immediately picked out the central star (mag 13, I believe), while I fiddled, stewed, scrunched up my eyes and generally whiffed at seeing it. Lesson immediately learned - observing skills are earned the old fashioned way - lotsa practice. The value of changing magnifications and trying filters such as an Ultrablock or OIII also became apparent.
I struck out on my next target, NGC 6742, but chalked it up to being mag 13 and low surface brightness, certainly not to any observing skill deficiency. :-)
The next planetary was a highlight of the night, NGC 6572 in Ophiuchus. At least 4 of us looked at it at low mag and ~180x. We all had different perceptions of the color - Peter claimed blue-green (since revised to aqua), Akkana saw Cyan, Dave saw blue, and I saw greenish-blue. Try this puppy sometime this summer and see what your observing crew has to say.
Shortly afterwards my best intentions of some disciplined, careful observing flew by the wayside as I once again fell victim to the call of the Summer Eye Candy. Resistance was Futile. Hours flew by. My face hurt from grinning. Thanks goodness Marek had the 18" so I could get an aperture fix. My notes from the next few hours are kinda blurry. I imagined them written by the late Hunter Thompson had he been an astronomer...
After 1:30am I started coming back to my senses from the indiscriminate photon-binge. Perhaps it was just fatigue setting in. By then the skies had darkened well beyond usual MB standards and it was hard to pull away. The last call became a memorable sweep of the Veil in Marek's scope. Tough to leave, but we ran into the 2am checkout time, and it would be easier to drive before my eyelids slammed shut.
The journey home through the fog was an eerie, but uneventful. Two deer and one frightened field mouse passed safely through my headlights, no doubt spoiling their night vision.
If I could get around the sleep deprivation issue, I'd surely be back for another round tonight.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 04, 2005 17:08:55 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 07, 2006 17:36:15 PT