by Darrell Lee
First, I lost three of my five potential observing partners. One got a baby sitter and changed his plans, one got a flat tire, and the third must have changed his mind because of the unpromising cloud cover that greeted me at 6 p.m.
Rusty England and I met at the College Chevron in Angwin at 6:30, waited 15 minutes for Bill Blakeslee, and drove up to Young Observatory on Pacific Union College's campus. Bill has been there, and had the gate combination, so we were hoping he'd join us. The gas station was already closed for the day, on a Saturday night. They roll up the sidewalks early in Angwin.
The wild night started with a Great Horned Owl flying up to a utility pole east of the parking lot near our parked cars. Irritated by our presence disturbing his hunting site, he soon left. The next night visitor was a very large bat, flying by on his breakfast foraging run. It was windy, and maybe 30% cloudy in the south. Early in the darkness, we saw dozens of lighning strikes far to our northeast where the clouds had gathered. We were glad we weren't trying to observe out there. Later, the same owl or another one flew up to the top of a tree on the southwest part of the parking lot, silhouetted against the sky glow in that direction. Then the coyotes started the first of at least three vocal serenades. With the wind, cold, lightning, and animals, it was definately wild.
I'd been imaging the previous weekend, so I brought an 8" SCT and a light-duty goto mount in my compact car. With the price of gas combined with my personal Katrina relief fund (a $3000 loan to my daughter in Biloxi), it's belt-tightening time.
I got started viewing planetaries in Cygnus, following Cloudy Night's current monthly article by Steve Coe. First off was NGC 6891. It's so tiny that I could only identify it by its blue fuzziness, even at 185X. My Autostar controller said it's 1" in diameter. Or was that my wild imagination at work?
Next was NGC 6905, the Blue Flash. This one is 2" in size, double the apparent size of NGC 6891. I find it and show it to Rusty. We agree it's much larger and satisfying than its neighbor. I look it up in the Night Sky Observers Guide. Hmm. It's really something like 22" in size, and NGC 6891 is roughly 11". And I haven't been drinking. Maybe the Meade Autostar programmer was.
Next up is NGC 6934, an open cluster. I see a group of stars, pan around, and find a nearby galaxy. I look up 6934 in Cartes du Ciel and find two nearby galaxies, NGC 6944 and 6944A. I look them up in NSOG. They're described as visible in 16-18" scopes. Something's not right here. A mag 13.8 galaxy through my 8" SCT with a first quarter moon bright enough to cast shadows? Then I read the description of NGC 6934. It's a globular cluster, not an OC. Identified by being on the edge of a keystone of stars. Yep. Magnitude 8.8. Yep, much more like what we're seeing. Take it to 200X and about 3 dozen individual stars become visible in an 8-10" scope. Yep, sort of. I can see half a dozen individual sparkles at the bottom edge of the globular.
Then I move up to Cygnus for the Blinking Planetary, NGC 6826. I've seen this before, but when Rusty asks, I can't answer what blinks. Is it the central star? Is the planetary itself invisible in direct vision? NSOG answers my question. You look at the planetary's central star directly until the planetary itself fades. Then you move your eye to its neighboring 8.25 magnitude neighboring star, and the planetary brightens discernably as your eye shifts from cone vision to rod vision on the Blinking Planetary. Pretty neat. Both Rusty and I play with it, and it's consistent.
Rusty packs up about midnight, as it's cold. The moon just went down about 11:30, so I switch to imaging. I can't get decent round stars or sharp focus, so I go real widefield. As in 28 mm widefield with my camera piggybacked and pointed at the North American Nebula (and later on IC1396 in Cepheus). I throw my sleeping bag over me and take a nap while my camera ticks off ten three-and-a-half minute exposures for the next 35 minutes. When I wake up and step out of the car, a big loud bird starts protesting. It sounds a little like a loon, but it's in the brush behind my car, only 20 feet away. I've been birdwatching for nearly 50 years, and I've never heard this bird call before. Do Grey Foxes vocalize? Bermuda tree frogs sound like birds. I need sleep. I pack everything up while the camera does its thing. My last step is to take my dark frames with the camera clicking off frames in the trunk as I drive home.
A great night, with great skies and wild experiences. You should have been there.
Posted on tac-sac Sep 11, 2005 11:06:38 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2006 14:52:04 PT