The Bruce Peninsula is Dark, 2007-10-04

by Christopher Hendrie

The darkness fully lived up to my childhood memories. I haven't seen the Milky Way so clear or bright or detailed in a long time, and I think the sky it was substantially darker than any night I've been at Coyote Lake. M33 wasn't quite visible to my unaided eye, but it was obvious in 8x42 binoculars. I believe the nearby Bruce Peninsula National Park carries some kind of Dark Sky designation.

My dad and I assembled the Orion XT8 Intelliscope earlier in the week. It took longer than I expected, even though it's conceptually simple. Collimation (using the pinhole cap provided) was a bit tricky the first time, because we had to adjust secondary mirror tilt and none of the adjustment screws act on useful axes. I think we did a decent job in the end, and a star test showed good symmetry. One caveat for those thinking of getting a telescope for friends or family: your idea of "modestly sized" may not coincide with theirs. ;-) My parents were a bit shocked when they saw the telescope boxes arrive (their expectations set by a friend's SCT from years ago), but fortunately found closet space for the unexpected "cannon".

I'm glad I decided to go with the Intelliscope, especially since this telescope will live at the cottage, used (I hope) by various relatives who probably aren't interested in learning a lot of star hopping skills. The Intelliscope system worked great the very first time we used it, and was accurate enough to place things in or close to the field with a 10mm eyepiece.

The only disappointment of the evening was that seeing was very poor. I could barely split epsilon lyra, and Jupiter was disappointing. Fortunately it didn't really bother us for DSOs.

For me, the highlight of the night was the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51; I hadn't seen it before, and the overall shape was reasonably distinct. I could tell there was texture and variation in the arms, but I couldn't trace the spiral per se (ie. if I didn't know what it was "supposed" to look like, I don't think I could have determined its chirality). My Mum preferred M31 and Albireo.

The ISS made a low-to-the-horizon pass at around magnitude 0, beautiful and golden; fortunately my Mum noticed it as I wasn't looking at the time. We also saw a steady trickly of meteors, but none exceptionally bright.

As the evening proceeded, low fog started to roll in off the water and obscure the western sky. My parents headed in, and I used the Intelliscope to rapidly work through a couple of constellations systematically: all the galaxies in Cass, all the nebulae, all the double stars, then proceed to Perseus and do the same. It was a fun alternative to the star hopping approach: I saw several new galaxies and a lot of pretty double stars. The Intelliscope let me fit many observations into those fleeting minutes before the sky blurred. I'm not particularly tempted to switch to goto or DSCs for my usual observing here, though, because I didn't get the same experience of learning the sky and objects at the same time. Taking time to find a new object gives my brain time to mull it over and get a "feel" for its location, name, properties, etc, by linking it to a much richer sensory and motor experience.

Even though we were weather-limited to a few hours of observing, I'm glad I added the telescope to this visit. It was wonderful to share my observing passion with my family, and to connect this hobby back to a place that holds so many happy memories.

Regards,
Christopher