I Rarely Get Out, But When I Do...

Bill Drelling

Here is a brief observing report from TSP.

I didn't arrive until 11:30 PM Monday night--long story about that that started at RTMC. Anyway, you cannot drive onto the ranch after dark, so I had to leave the car (and all my gear) parked outside the gate. It wasn't much of a problem as there were 30-40 astro-mobiles out there already. Once I got set up with a bunk, I headed out onto the upper field.

The skies were great, on par with historical TSP seeing and transparency. I took a couple of star trail shots and headed right for one of the biggest dobs on the upper field. Turns out the owner of the scope was a friend of mine...he just bought a 30 Obsession. He upgraded from a 25" -- I can completely understand how you big dob guys can get aperture fever! ;^)

Anyway, we stayed up until the sun started to rise.

M57 looked incredibly bright. It was almost too much scope for the Ring. We hunted down that small and faint spiral galaxy that sits about 4-M57 diameters away from the Ring. The galaxy was so faint that it was difficult to even make out that it was in fact a spiral, but your eye would catch a few photons from it so you could see it was there. The Veil was great. I know it sounds improbable, but we both thought that we could see a slight tinge of green in it. The detail in the witch's broom portion was stunning. It reminded me of what you can see in some of the better images taken by amateurs.

We also hunted down the Snake. The entire object fit into the FOV using a 40mm Nagler. This was the best I have seen it (of course how often do you get to use a 30" mirror under TX skies). The snake had a puffy look to it which I had not noticed in other views in the past. It gave it a 3-D impression. The last time I saw the snake was through an 18" dob at Barcroft...the extra 12 inches of aperture works wonders!

There were some noteworthy objects in Cygnus as well. The Dumbbell was interesting. We could clearly see mottling in the core of the nebulosity as well as extention of the fainter areas. The Crescent fit very nicely into the 20MM eyepiece. We could see a fair amount of detail within the central area.

We are all hoping for clear skies again. Gotta head back to the ranch to set up the FSQ for some astrophotography tonight.

Dennis, I think I am the only person on the list at TSP this year.

Regards,

Bill