by Darrell Lee
It took me a while to set up, so I fiddled around in the dark while everyone else viewed. It didn't help that I forgot to bring a finderscope, but at least I had a Telrad. Somehow I disconnected something or forgot how to use my Argo-Navis/ServoCat system, because it wasn't going to targets. I input the targets, then had to zero the readouts manually with the ServoCat. When I initialized the DSCs, I got warp factors from 80 to 180 until I realized my altitude encoder wasn't plugged in. That'll teach me to let the scope collect dust since Shingletown.
IHOP was a pleasant surprise, with extremely dark skies everywhere but west, and the western sky glow wasn't bad. After my exhausting drive through Fairfield, Vacaville, and Sacrement during Friday afternoon rush hour, I didn't feel like stressing myself, so binocular observations of the North American Nebula, IC 1396 in Cepheus, and (later) the Pleiades and Double Cluster got me relaxed. I was pleased that the North American's features are so easily seen through binoculars.
I started out (mentally) easy with my 18" Nightsky, too. I put in a 3.5mm eyepiece and tried to pull out the central star in M57 at 633X. I got maybe a twinkle or two, but nothing definitive. Then I tried for IC 1296 near M57. No dice. Better luck with NGC 6207 near M13, but not for IC 4617 hslfway between NGC 6207 and M13. I could see the pair of doubles that IC 4617 lies between, but no such luck. Okay, the transparency or seeing must not be too good. Tony and Sneor confirm that. So do I. I can't even split Epsilon Lyrae 1 and 2, the Double-Double. Seeing gets a little better after midnight, but it's never great. I can't pull the F component out of the Trapezium when Orion rises.
Ken comes over and we chat about imaging. He's got an 8 bit monochrome cooled CCD setup on a Takahashi refractor. I learn he doesn't know about the Iris Nebula, one of my favorites (NGC 7023 in Cepheus). I explain how it has three dark lobes, a throat speckled with stars, and nebulosity forming the rest of an iris flower. Since his system is mounted on a Meade LXD55 go-to mount, he goes there and snaps a couple of exposures. His single 60 second black and white exposure captures more than my stack of a dozen or twenty 30 second color exposures. Not only can we see the iris' throat with its stars, there's stamen of nebulosity through the center of the flower. I've made a convert to the subtle beauty of the Iris Nebula.
I poke around a little in the Cygnus/Cepheus area with my scope, finding one of my favorite triples, Struve 2816, in IC 1396. I find the eastern Veil in the scope, but can't locate it with binoculars, even holding filters in front of the objective lenses. I find the dark nebula Barnard 364 south of a line connecting the "rear" square edge line of the constellation. Then I revisit open cluster NGC 6939 and its same-field-of-view galactic partner NGC 6946, plus nearby NGC 7380.
By 2 a.m., Alvin and Tony have left, and Orion is an hour into the sky, with the Fornax galaxies due up a little later (I find a couple of them, NGC 1386 and NGC 1399, but they're all so small and dim and confusing that I decide to put them off for another night.) I spend a lot of slow quality time soaking in the intricacies of Orion. In the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) area, I find the bright nebulae NGC 2023, IC 432 and IC 431. I also find the large dark nebula IC 435 on the other side of NGC 2023, and I float the sea of dark nebulosity that is IC 434 to hunt the wall of bright nebulosity near Mintaka for the Horsehead dark nebula, Barnard 33. It definitely proves challenging, as I try a narrowband Orion Ultrablock filter, a broadband Sky Glow filter, and finally an H-beta filter. I compare the star field with a photo in NSOG, so I know where IC 434 is supposed to be, but it isn't until I try the H-beta that I get a ghostly dark appearance that I can call the Horsehead.
I jump to the M42 region of Orion and visually see the three bright nebular components that outline the Running Man Nebula, NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973. I find that my imaging makes me a better astronomer, as I see details in my photos that I then look for visually. I luxuriate in M42, M43, and 1980. I roam over M42 like I'm in a space ship, able to hover over the dark tube of nebulosity that juts out nearly over the Trapezium. I confirm the commalike shape of M43 and its dark spots. I float over M42's magnificent "wings". It's all monochrome greenish-gray, but almost like taking a scanning electron microscope over my astrophoto to see close-ups of M42's beauty.
Finally, I've outlasted even Sneor. If you drove 2-1/2 hours to get to a viewing site, you'd try to maximize your viewing time, too ;-). On a whim, I decide to check Mars, which is now high overhead at 5 a.m. I got my first look at Mars at SSP in July, when its South Polar Cap was quite visible. A couple of backyard attempts were fruitless because of bad atmospheric problems. Tonight I get lucky. In better moments of seeing, I easily see several of Mars' distinctive features. Mars and Luna nomenclature remind me of homeopathic medicine, where people invent weird names so they'll have their own mastery of a subject no one else understands. So I found an old December 1988 Astronomy magazine that tells me I saw black Dellaton Sinus sticking down like the tip of South America, flanked by Pacific side bright area Libya and Atlantic side bright area Syrtis Major (which had a distinctly yellowish-orange cast to part of it). Above Dellaton Sinus, black Meridiani Sinus snaked out to the right above it, and dark Hellasponius stuck out like a second finger above Meridiani Sinus. The bright gulf I saw between the right facing fingers is called Gallinaria, and the dark area near the mouth of the gulf is Sabbaeus Sinus. Well you get the idea. I also saw two fingers going left above Dellaton Sinus, another gulf area, and a dark ringlet circling a central upper bright area. I'll call them Tony F, Alvin, Shneor, and Ken until I get them figured out.
Posted on tac-sac Oct 01, 2005 14:49:39 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 13, 2006 22:47:33 PT