Hualapai Mountain AZ, right in my front yard:-)

Greg LaFlamme

My wife and I just got back from a wonderful vacation to our mountain property above and 20 miles East of Kingman AZ. The weather was perfect (we love it there in May) and as usual, I planned the trip around New moon. We have a half acre up there @ 6200' in a beautiful and fragrant ponderosa pine forest. We're in a sorta "half-bowl" flanked by 7000-8500' peaks to my West and North. A short drive up the road, I can get great horizons but frankly it wasn't necessary if I timed my observing sessions right. Its a huge black sky filled with stars. I worked Mark Wagner's April / May lists in conjunction with Urano Metria and that proved a great combo. Those AGC's are not for wimps! In many cases I could only see little shimmers and slashes of light with averted vision! I love my 15" f5 but those AGC's and HCG's had me hankering for more aperture,,,, a 40" f/4 should do the trick;-) Having said that, I was surprised at the amount of detail that could be seen in many galaxies. Mottling, dark rifts and sometimes spiral arms. M99 had a full set and the view of NGC 4051 with its hooked bar still has me twitching! Two of my new favorites and I took some time to sketch them. One night I did a little astrophotography. A minimal effort was made because "visual" is my game and I hated not being at the eyepiece. This link works for most but not for all, just let me know if there is an issue.

http://greglaflamme.fototime.com/Hualapia%20astronomy

I had six outta seven dark usable nights, seeing suffered at times but overall it was my best and most productive astronomy experience to date. I was organized big time. Every night around 8:00, I would roll my scope out into the cool night air, remove the covers then take an hour nap. Bout 9:30 I'd head out, roll the scope to the N. end of the lot, do a two-star alignment, engage the drives and knock around the big Messier's. M51 and 101 are incredible!!!!! The thing I love the most about M51 is the huge "fan" of stars strune into space as the tip of the great outer arm fades South into the blackness. Richard Crisp captured it very well in his images from last week. M101 is an observing session all to itself. SQM readings @ 10:00 were 21.51 then around midnight ranged from 21.61 @ zenith to 21.83 @ the East and South. With great lists and Urano Metria set up on my music stand very little squeaked by me. In fact, I even found a couple GX's not listed in UM (so I drew them in;-) Something about the altitude I guess, those dim MGC's and UGC's really popped out. Very entertaining stuff. Who says chasing faint fuzzies isn't fun, I had a blast and could easily gone out every night for a year straight between Luna's and one day I'll do just that.

The summer Milky way is here! I did my best to avoid working anything East of Scorp as I'm saving that for Bumpass/Adin but I did use my 77mm Miyauchi binocs to brows the Barnard's along our galactic arms. Incredible wisps of smoke and gas shown in great detail @ 20x magnification. The added contrast from the small aperture binos really brings them out and even my wife was in awe. I did use a 26 Nag/OIII to look at the Veil and Crescent but can you blame me? I went after them like an angry bass! I'm not listing a bunch of objects, too daunting. I'll just take the easy way out and say that I logged around 350 objects, most of them new to me. I'll have an exact count once I get them all entered and complete my follow-ups. I loved the OR's posted by all this last new moon, they are so well written. I'm happy to read that Fremont peak got so dark. I'm a huge fan of the squirrel meter when used properly and Mark J knows how to wield one masterfully. We get similar readings with a +/- delta of 0.05:-) MJ, you the man! Great work down South! By the way, you can always hit me on the cell for plumbing advice and thanks for taking over the list for my while I was on the miserable dial-up;-) I didn't even read TAC until I got home and had a mess of catching up to do. Tonight I face Sky tools with a stack of paper and yellow highlighter...

GML