Coonabarabran, 9/1/2005: You Never Forget Your First Time

by Marek Cichanski

Even though cirrus clouds menaced David and I during the day, the sky was clear at astro twilight. Venus and Jupiter hung very close together in the big, bright zodiacal light. Venus was mildly gibbous, and a satellite had just emerged from behind Jupiter. Planetary images in the CPT were quite nice, even though the planets were fairly close to the horizon.

Astro twilight arrives at 7 pm down here this time of year, and astro dawn isn't until 5 am. This gives the potential for a 10-hr observing night. As it's turned out so far (as of 9/6), the night of 9/1-2 was the only complete all-nighter, and it was an amazing night. At about 7 pm, I made this note:

"I'm facing SSW as I sit here, and I could really get used to the view I get as I lift my head up from my notebook - Eta Carinae... Crux... Alpha and Beta Cen... Norma starcloud... Scorpius... Sagittarius starclouds. Lord have mercy, that's nice. I'm spoiled."

That last part is really true. I've been under these austral skies long enough now that I'm going to expect the same thing when I get home. Gotta start getting my head ready for that.

During the night, I observed a number of objects from Hartung's "Astronomical Objects for Southern Telescopes". This is a great book to have during one's first (and not-so-first) SoHem observing trip. Here are a few highlights of Hartung objects that I saw:

the Blue Planetary: Cute tiny little blue disc, looks like Uranus or Neptune.

BTW, David and I both re-discovered Uranometria on this trip. Neither of us had bothered using it for years, but it has turned out to be the main atlas for both of us. We thought that H-B was going to be perfect, but we just can't handle the rectangles and diamonds that it uses for nebulae. When either of us got into an area like Eta Car, Sagittarius, or the LMC or SMC, the rectangles just weren't cutting it. We needed the drawn shapes from U2000. The problem with Uranometria, though, is that it has too few stars and too many faint objects. We got around this problem by annotating our Uranometriae with transparent, write-on-able sticky notes. This is the way to go when preparing for an observing session.

Back to the objects...

The "Running Chicken Nebula" showed up nicely in the Terminagler with an OIII, but I couldn't quite see any poultry.

I spent a lot of this night logging objects with my usual NGC-style abbreviations, but eventually I succumbed to the sinful pleasure of just noodling around on a chart page, hopping from one object to another, not spending any time writing notes. It felt oh-so-good. Around 22:00-22:30, I spent some time looking at the Lagoon/Trifid area. I used the A17 chart on U2000, and it was a great time. The central Milky Way had moved off of the zenith, but was probably still 45-50 degrees up. I finally found a comfy position on the stepladder that I'd been using as an improvised observing chair, and that was really nice. I'll always remember sitting there comfortably on the ladder, feet propped up on a patio chair, atlas open on my right leg, glasses hanging lightly on the fingers of my left hand, as I cruised amongst the 'promised land' of the CMW. The austral winter air was chilly with a faint breeze, and the smell of eucalyptus smoke wafted gently past from the cottage's wood heater. A slice of paradise pie.

While in the neighborhood, I had a nice wide-angle look at the 652/6528 area, also called 'Baade's Window'. Incredibly rich field in the Large Sgr starcloud.

Then, I did yet another decadent, non-logging tour on chart A20. This is the region around M7 and M6. So many wonderful objects. Near M7, there is a wonderful "sense of scale" illustration. First, there's big, bright, spectacular M7 in the foreground. Then there's 6444, clearly an OC, but smaller, fanter, and clearly farther away. Then there's 6453, a globular cluster that really LOOKS far, far away in space. Some star clouds (6455, 6437, 6421) are also somewhere out there in the distance. This was far and away the most 3D view I'd ever had through a telescope.

Around midnight to 1 am, I did the SMC. Saw all of Hartung's recommended objects, and it was quite nice. That was just a warmup, though...

At about 1:25, I looked at NGC 253 through the 12" dob that David was using. It was at, you guessed it... the zenith. The view was awesome.

At 1:56, I made this note:

"Wonderful darkness and transparency throughout the sky. Dark background, with bright, crisp stars down to the horizon. Bright LMC and SMC, showing hints of detail to the naked eye. Connoiseur-level skies."

Then came the LMC...

And everything about the hobby changed...

I'd looked at the LMC a few times up to this point, and I'd certanly admired the Tarantula. Wow. And David had been a big LMC fan since his last Oz trip, and he made it clear that the LMC was a big part of why he came back to Oz. But it wasn't until I hit on the right magnification that I really understood: The LMC is DIFFERENT. These clouds are not like anything else in the sky. George Ellery Hale used to have a stock line about how "The sun is a star, the only one close enough for us to study up close". Well, replace "sun" with "LMC", and "star" with "galaxy", and you've got it. We see clusters and nebulae around us in the spiral arms of the Milky Way, and so we have a pretty good idea of what those look like. We see external galaxies, and occasionally we can see hints of HII regions or globular clusters in those galaxies, but we can never see any significant detail. But in the LMC, we have a nearby galaxy where the nebulae are close enough to show a wealth of detail, and the clusters are close enough to resolve individual stars. Once you start to understand the scale of things, it's a whole different perspective.

I started by using my 15x50 IS binos and the main U2000 LMC chart. This made a great introductory tour, and I began to smile. I was starting to see why David made such a big deal about this beast. It's just full of good stuff.

Then I put the 31 Nagler on the CPT and did a 'Terminagler Tour', just panning the scope around, not even looking at the atlas. (Did I mention how well the CPT performs for widefield? One tends to think of an f/5.7 Royce optic like that as specializing in high-magnification stuff, which is true, but it gave awesome views through the 31 Nagler field, too. And no ParaCorr needed.)

This was the life-changing moment. My smile broke out into a big 'ol grin, as I panned over to one huge complex of nebulae and clusters after another. It went on and on and on... far too much good stuff.

This hobby has had a lot of great 'firsts':

First time I looked at the Moon through Rich Neuschaefer's AP155 with a binoviewer

First time I looked through an 18" dob, courtesy of Bruce Jensen.

First time I went to Downtown Virgo

First time I used the Challenger by myself

But right up there with all of those, and in some ways belonging to a category by itself, was my first good look at the LMC. A few days later, I think David referred to it as 'the inexhaustible deep well'. How true.

Jim Van Nuland has said "Even if Saturn were the only thing in the sky, I'd still own a telescope". I've dittoed that, and that's certainly also true for the moon, at least for me. Add the LMC to that list. But the LMC is different. When it's up, it sort of IS the only thing in the sky! It's entirely possible to just drop everything else and look at the LMC, and have no regrets.

And I've only used the Uranometria charts! I haven't even touched those nutty E and F charts from H-B! (I think they would require a really big scope to fully exploit.)

Here's a really good way to sum it up: The LMC is so damn good, it's as good as new gear. Once I saw this beast, I began to value plane tickets to Oz every bit as much as any piece of new gear. Sure, a beefier mount for the 6" Mak would be nice. Sure, a binoviewer would be nice. Sure, it would be nice to try imaging. Sure, it would be nice to have an H-alpha scope again. But those things all have one fatal flaw - none of them will show me the LMC. Only a 747 can do that. I'll be back.

As the wee hours wore on towards 5 am, I continued gaping at the LMC and laughing at my good fortune. Then I started to think I was going crazy - I started to see flashes in the sky. I thought it was just fatigue, until David saw them, too. From behind the Timor Rock (our miniature backyard Devil's Tower), silent flashes lit up the clear, dark, sky. Eventually a few wee clouds came by, and we realized that it was distant, silent lightning somewhere beyond the horizon. (Never a sound - I half-expected a big tripod to come walking by...)

It made a great wrap-up to a great night. Went to sleep after ten incredible hours of observing. Life was very good. (Did I mention the electric mattress pad?) 38 Farenheit and 99% humidity. Hard to believe it's summer back home. What a night. You never forget your first time...

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 05, 2005 19:49:55 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 11, 2006 18:46:21 PT