by Andrew Pierce
I had planned to drive a little ways from the condo we were staying at in order to observe, but it was too late to drive around looking for a spot. Earlier in the evening I scouted out the Moir gardens, which were adjacent to the condos. I was just thinking how perversely the area was lighted, with horizontal spotlights from a nearby building that ruined this otherwise dark area with glare, without actually illuminating the garden paths, when I took a wrong step and fell sideways into an invisible, but very wet and muddy, ornamental pond. So the garden was not to be as an observing site.
It turned out there was a relatively shadowy spot very near our building that had a nice southern horizon. I set up on the grass, collimated, aligned the Rigel finder and looked around to see nothing but clouds. So I had 30 minutes to sip a mai tai and start a little later.
When it cleared again at 11:30 I took a look at M46/47 and NGC 2903, the bright galaxy in Leo as test objects. I saw five stars in the Trapezium, as seeing was just average. Its pretty dark even in "downtown" Poipu, so it was a lot like our very darkest local sites. The island of Kauai has only about 56,000 inhabitants, and they are very spread out and don't use a lot of lighting.
My first real find was the Rosette Nebula, which I saw both with and without an OIII filter. The nebula is a bigger than the field of view with a 24 mm Panoptic eyepiece. I saw the nebula all around the cluster, but it seemed brighter to the west.
The bottom part of Vela was easily seen to the south, so I started working down there. Open cluster IC 2391 was easy with both the unaided eye and the scope. It's dominated by a bright triangle and another bright pair of stars.
My only new-to-me object of the trip was globular cluster NGC 3201 in Vela. It was resolved in a 13.8 mm EP, at 87x, and wasn't improved at higher power, probably due to seeing issues at a low elevaton. This is a very bright, very nice object. Its comparable to M10 or M12, but its way too low (-46.4 degrees) to be easily seen from northern California. Check it out if you have a chance.
I found the Eight-Burst Nebula, NGC 3132, also in Vela, which is also a fantastic object. You can see it from northern California, but it was much improved in Hawaii. It resembled the Eskimo nebula, with a bright central star and gauzy round envelope, but it was noticeably brighter at the outside edge of the ring. Very very pretty.
Mu Velorum was now near the meridian so I took a shot at Eta Carina, which is due south from Mu Vel. Portaballs can't actually be aimed at the horizon, but I was able to get a peek at this very bright nebula by tilting the base of the scope and also pulling the scope down past its limit of travel. I suppose it was resting on its struts, at least a little bit. The struts survived and I didn't notice any collimation issues at 50x. The nebula was bright, complex and had several stars embedded in it. There were some palm trees along my line of sight so I walked down to the beach with my 15x70 binoculars. The nebula was obvious in the binos, an oblong bright patch above the Pacific. The clouds along the horizon rose up and hid it before I could get back to it with the telescope.
I walked back to the scope and traced out Markarian's chain, which I found by aiming the scope halfway between Vindemiatrix and Denebola. Portaballs don't have finderscopes. I've never surfed Virgo at 1:00 a.m. in shorts, no shoes and a t-shirt before. Also looked at M104, and the M65 trio.
Back at the condo balcony I looked at Omega Centauri in the binos and the Southern Cross with my eyes. And so to bed.
I forgot to mention that I met up with KEASA, the local observing society, but only briefly. They had their monthly public night scheduled for last Saturday night at a softball field near Hanapepe. The clouds were a thick deck that night, but we happened to be driving back from Waimea at the right time so I stopped and said hello. There was one KEASA guy there, to tell people to go home, and a few amateur astronomer tourist types who were packing up. The local fellow had checked the radar and satelliites (no Clear Sky Clock coverage in Hawaii!) and didn't even bring binos. I asked why they don't observe a little farther from the ocean and he said spray isn't a problem even at Barking Sands.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Feb 28, 2006 13:44:09 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 02, 2006 19:59:54 PT