Coonabarabran, NSW, 8/22-23/2006: Longest Log Entry Ever

by Marek Cichanski

Last night was really great. It was yet another all-nighter, and I was red-lining the fun meter the whole time. The night's observing had just the right combination of premeditation and spontaneity.

After checking the IR sat loop, I was sure that we were going to get clouds during the night, but we never did. Crazy.

Dan and I had a pizza here in town, and then got back to Timor in the twilight and got outselves set up. On a whim, I decided to take an eye-candy stroll through Eta Carinae's neighborhood. Eta is quite low at this time of year, and sinking, but the Eta region is so crazy good that it's worth it.

So, still in deep twilight, I plunked the Terminagler in the focuser (sans ParaCorr, in order to stay balanced), and pointed the scope down at Eta. All of the eyepiece fields around this area are chock full of Milky Way field stars, which makes them very pretty. The nebulosity of Eta was just starting to come out in the twilight, and it was quite nice. I did a quick stroll along the galactic equator, consulting page 199 in U2000 South. NGCs 3324, 3247 3293, and 3199. These are all nice OCs and nebulae. Then I put in the OIII filter, to enhance the nebulae. Then it was back along these NGC objects to Eta. Oh. My. God. I'm still blown away by how blown away I was by it. (Did that make any sense?) The sharp-edged bright rays of bright nebulosity and dark lanes were really out of hand. It's as stare-worthy as Omega Cen, just in different ways.

Then it was on to one of my absolute favorite things in the hobby - a 'blanket session' with the central Milky Way overhead. I wrote about this at some length last year, so I don't need to belabor the point here. It did give a nice 'floaty' sensation, though, as though I were floating in space, looking around at the galaxy. Very enjoyable. Then I did another fun thing, a bino survey of the whole central MW. I looked at all of the DSOs on Deep Map 600 (except for PNs) from the Wild Duck to the Norma starcloud. This was really fun, and only took an hour or two.

Although the middle of the night is usually kind of 'down time' around here this time of year, I said 'heck with it, I'm going to the SMC, it's high enough.' So, I went to the SMC and logged all of the objects in it that are shown on U2000's closeup page. This only took a few hours, to my surprise.

Then, heck, it was time for the LMC. I decided to stop pecking around the edges and go for the good stuff. Here is a page from my logbook, verbatim. It is the longest single entry I've ever written about one DSO.

"02:30... on to the LMC... Let's go straight for the Tarantula!

2070 (02:50): 30 Dor... how does one begin to describe it? Once could say 'central part of the 17 Nagler field, pretty faint to bright, basically round, complex structure, brighest at center where it's associated with stars.'

Okay, that's true as far as it goes, but things like '17N cent fld' scarcely hints at the impression of massiveness and magnificence imparted by this object. Although it doesn't have the apparent surface brightness of M42 or Eta Carinae, the Tarantula seems to say 'even at this distance, I look THIS bright.. contemplate my luminosity, ye mighty, and despair.'

I'm not sure that any sketch could improve on John Herschel's. He clearly saw the bubble structure, and that's part of what's so neat about the Tarantula - it tells the fundamental tale of so many of the LMC's objects. Although J.H. didn't have narrowband filters or imaging gear, those devices eventually revealed that so many of the objects he saw are giant starbirth bubbles, voids blown into the natal clouds by the searing, blasting winds of the LMC's violent young stars. 'Bubble' - what a peaceful-sounding word here on Earth. But in the precincts of the LMC, the bubble tells a tale of massiveness, of violence, of savage energies tapped and unleased. Look upon these works, ye mighty, and feel awe."

I think it's a testament to the LMC that I found myself moved to write that at nearly 3am with a red flashlight held in my mouth. The LMC does that to people.

Well, I guess I'd better skedaddle along, the sun's getting low. Tonight the sat loop REALLY makes me think we'll get cloud, but who knows... I suspect that I can least get in some CMW during the early part of the night. And the forecast is only calling for one cloudy night, tomorrow. Crikey! This trip is so nutty it isn't even funny. I'll be dining out on this for years. Utterly insufferable. I'm already looking forward to telling the 'so there we were...' stories at the pub and at Montebello. I'm also fantasizing about that travel scope I keep taling about building, for future Oz trips.

Take it easy,

Marek