Wed 5/17/2006 MB: Binoviewers and Black Cloud Nights... That's what I'm talkin' about, baby!

by Marek Cichanski

But look on the bright side: It's been the better part of a year since you've had to read one of my insufferable gonzo 3am, just-got-home posts, crowing about how great it was up at Montebello.

Well, hang on to your butts, boys and girls, because summer is back! I just drove down from the first Black Cloud Night of 2006 at MB! It was 67 degrees F and bone dry when Michael Swartz and I left at 2 am. And, more importantly, there was not one single point source of light visible anywhere in the entire Bay Area from up on the hill. Not from the MB lot gate, not from Los Trancos, not from the drive down Page Mill. Only a few radio towers on high hills could be seen. The rest was just a series of dim glows under the impeccable marine layer. I'd say that the full layer didn't really form up until sometime around 11pm or midnight, so it's not like we luxuriated in its protection the whole time we were observing. Much of the night was a typical MB night. However, during the last couple of hours of astro darkness, it was very nice. When the moon rose around 1 am, there has scarcely ever been a moonrise that was more regretted. (Still, it's always fun to watch the moon rise behind the grass and bushes as seen through binoculars.)

Normally MB gives about 19.75 on the SQM, and tonight I was getting about 20.3. So, it wasn't really a Coonabarabran 22 or anything like that, but for MB it was noticeably darker than normal. The rising summer Milky Way was visible closer to the horizon than usual.

There were also some periods of very nice seeing. Jupiter showed a wealth of detail in its cloud bands, at least during tantalizing moments of great seeing. I saw it in my 18" f/4.5 Obsession (with a ca. 7.5" aperture mask), and it was also well seen in Michael's 18" Plettstone and Kevin Z's 5" Tak refractor.

As always on a "first night at MB in forever", I don't have any observing of consequence to report. Typical casual eye candy. Poked around the Coma galaxy cluster a little more than usual with an Astrocard, that was about it. Mostly it was bright fun stuff. I can't remember the last H400-II object I logged. However, I can also hardly remember the last time I had so much fun during an observing session.

And I owe it all to Michael Swartz, because he loaned me his Denkmeier binoviewer for an hour or two.

Now, we've all looked through binoviewers, and of those who can merge the images without too much difficulty, I don't know anyone who DOESN'T like them. But, like many people, I hadn't jumped on the binoviewer train. Nice, I had thought, but not knock-your-socks-off. Well, after tonight, my feet are chilly, 'cause they ain't got no socks on 'em. I was totally blown away by the experience of using the binoviewer for an extended session on my 18" Obsession. Zuff-whoof, geez maneez, Man-O-schewitz.

Along with the Denk, Michael let me use a pair of 13mm t6 Naglers (to die for), and a pair of 24mm Panoptics. Both were great. I think that the thing that I really noticed about the bino view was how much BIGGER the objects looked. There was an enormous missing piece of the puzzle that somehow fell in to place, and I was just sitting there looking at the objects, like a normal person with two eyes. And not just that, but the words "immersive" and "revelatory" kept coming to mind. Globulars like M3, M5, M13, M4, and M10 were orders of magnitude more spectacular than I'd ever seen them before. Watching those suckers drift past was like being 9 years old again and seeing the beginning of the first Star Wars movie. I even tried some dim stuff, and although the binoviewers do dim the light a bit, they still seemed worth it. I looked at M51 using the 13mm Naglers, and the spiral structure looked awesome. How cool. NGC 4565 looked nice, too. Yeah, if I were hunting faint fuzzies, I'd probably go cyclops, but for any kind of eye candy, the binoviewer seems like the way to go. I don't even want to think about what it would be like to use one down in Oz. The LMC and the central MW would be unreal through one of those suckers.

Well, I'm fading pretty fast, gotta go to bed. MB rocked. Top-shelf. Totally worth going. We have put up with some really grim conditions this year, but tonight made up for an awful lot.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 18, 2006 03:34:45 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.4 Jul 18, 2006 18:07:35 PT