Willow Springs- I need sleep! 6-9-08

Greg LaFlamme

Saturday afternoon I drove up to Kevin Ritschel’s place at Willow Springs for a night of celestial wonderment with Kevin, Steve Gottlieb and Mark Wagner. The drive up was pleasant and the GPS unit took me on a route I had not taken before, off at 25 then through the farms. I really liked it and that will be my new route. Along J-1 there was some beautiful scenery. Magpie’s swooping over the road in front of me with their black and white wings. Pretty birds! One got a little too brave and headed right for me. Luckily he pulled up just in time and narrowly missed becoming a windshield decoration. Cute little cotton-tail rabbits seemed to be competing with the chipmunks in a game of “cross the road”. There were no losers…. as far as I know. What could they be thinking? I love these hilly mountain areas. Some folks like a beach, I like a mountain…Go figure. Kevin has a great piece of property with an adobe brick house and matching garage. Cool as that is, the 33” f/5 steals the show! I went on and on about this scope on my last Willow O.R. and thought by now I’d be over it.. Nope, its still a shock to see this monster in person. Even better is watching Kevin pushing it out into the driveway by himself… looks like a kid pushing a bus! About 9:30 that night the I.S.S passed overhead moving from West to East. (at least I think it was the I.S.S). we just stood there watching it, Steve with the binocs said hmmm, there no blinking lights, definitely a satellite.

We did some light observing (no pun) while the moon was still up. Mark and I commented about how well galaxies looked despite having a 3 ½ day old moon placed so high in the sky. As moonset drew near, the darkness increased. Like Steve said, 21.62 on the squirrels (SQM). To me, that’s dark enough to see anything you want to see. Seeing though was hit and miss and transparency seemed effected a bit but over all I was impressed with the night, the company and objects I saw. Mark introduced me to Hickson 82 and we were able to easily pick out the “D” component in his 18”, I ventured back to my 15” scope to give it a try. No problem! All four galaxies in a parallelogram formation with no averted vision Hey, Hicksons are fun:-) It’s always helpful to observe with those who have been there done that, it makes my night easier and allows me to see more with the short amount of time I have.

Kevin treated us to some great Southern planetaries, globs and galaxies including Cent A and Omega Cen! The seeing was too soft early in the evening to really get a clean view of Omega Cen but I can imagine what it must look like in that monster on a steady night. I have been trying to save the summer super-star objects for GSSP but what the heck, how often do I get to climb up the side of a 33”… Throughout the night he showed us the showpiece Messier nebulas along our galactic plain and this was the first time that I sensed a warm tone in M7, M16, M8 and M20. M16 was, dare I say purplish? Ok Purple. Maybe it is just my mind generating false colors based on the different gradients of grey, that explanation makes good sense. Regardless of brain tease, I saw some color and that adds charm much the same way a good set of binoviewers can. I also peeped on the Veil, 10’ up a 14’ ladder, taking my time moving through it in its entirety, Pickering's, the broom, dragon head and all. The crescent nebula (N 6888) looked so good, I got hungry!

Steve was on with the cool list! Showed me things I’d probably never would have otherwise never seen. One of them being a Haro planetary. H 1-36 aka P353.5-4.9. It was so stellar that it appeared as just another star but when I blinked the OIII filter, only one star remained. Oooooohhhh,,, I sat there fascinating at it for a couple minutes, moving the filter in and out of the light path with a big smile like the first time I met Mickey Mouse;-) Steve also pointed out a small dim gx right in line with Mizar/Alcor, it was M 9-22-53. Neat to find a galaxy in a field I’ve seen so many times before but had never noticed. Saw spiral structure in NGC 4490, turns out the Western arm is a distorted tidal arm caused by interaction with its close neighbor NGC 4498. Arp? In my 15” @270x, the arm was noticeable but in the 33, both arms showed! NGC 5248 Also tipped it’s hand and showed it’s Western arm! Amazing to see this detail in something 50 million ly away. Over 60 objects were seen, and about 35 were logged. I crawled into the back of the truck around 4:00Am and crashed out fast. Thanks to Kevin, Steve and Mark for a perfect evening under the stars, I can’t thank you folks enough.

GML