Happy fizzies party at Willow Springs

Jamie Dillon

Conditions were really good at Willow Springs and a crew of us had a fun night. It was my third time at Willow Springs but the first time at Deepsky Ranch, home of the cave of Dobzilla. Phetsy and Kevin made us feel welcome and are fun in their own right. The ever genial Mark Johnston was there, so were Elena and Craig the Rocket People, with their delightful little girl Ziana who just turned 4. The cultured Bob Ayers came over and hung out for conversation and views. The Rocket People are old good buddies; we've observed together a whole lot, it was great to hang out in the dark with them again.

Dobzilla was necessarily one of the participants. It was interesting to compare what I could see in a 33" and then immediately in an 11, with a difference factor of exactly 9x the light-gathering. Big difference using an OIII filter. Surrounding stars and stellar objects punch right thru an OIII in a 33" scope, while your nebular object still gets nicely enhanced. Kevin showed off IC 1295, a big bright planetary nebula in his scope, next to ngc 6712, a bright globular, all in Scutum. I knew I'd seen the globular more than once but had no memory of the planetary. It's not charted in SkyAtlas, and while I've combed thru that lovely area of the Milky Way, I hadn't stumbled onto a big bright PN. Found it in Uranometric, and yes there it was unfiltered in Felix at 126x, brighter and showing a shape in the OIII.

Thing was, going back to 6712, it was real dim in the OIII, being a middling globular for us from Earth. Sure wasn't dim in Dobzilla filtered.

The other whizbang comparison was in talking about limits for galaxy sizes. In Felix, if a galaxy has width and length much below 1.0 arcminutes, I can plan on going elsewhere. Kevin and Craig were looking for a little thing (maybe that little galaxy next to M57), we checked size in the Deepsky Field Guide and it's 0.4' by 0.4'. I was all pffff, Kevin's going, "Shoot, that's all of 24 arcseconds, why not!" It was after midnight and I started to doubt myself with the numbers, sat and meditated on it. Finally waltzed over to Dobzilla and hollered up the ladder, "Man you're spoiled!"

We had some transient bands of clouds go by, but the bulk of the night was pristine. 6.4 limiting magnitude and a wide and imposing Milky Way. I spent most of the night just watching the stars wheel. Don't tell anyone but I'm secretly a naked eye star-gawker who has a sideline with the telescope. Maybe one night out of 5, I'll just happily watch the stars move. Did get one new object in Felix as already noted.

Another thing about Willow Springs, the horizons are dark in all directions, and there are no neighboring lights. This is refreshing and profoundly satisfying. Lake San Antonio comes close to this, with some minor glow to the SSE, and up at Cone Peak in the southern Santa Lucias, also close to LSA, you get this. Anderson Mesa out of Flagstaff has teeny lightdomes from Flagstaff and distant Phoenix. At Lassen on Bumpass it's dark all right, no kidding, but you can see where Chico is. At Devastated all you can see is dark horizons. I live for this kind of thing.

Started packing up at 2, finally rolled at 4. No concerns with traffic going home on San Benito county road J1, then up 25 toward Hollister, over the San Juan Bautista and home to Salinas. An hour and a quarter leisurely drive, cake. Got to hit our local farmers market at 11 for some incredible fruit.

Good that all the little TACos explored all over the West, 11 sites this past week our gang has hit, as noted. Those stars just never get old.

DDK