May 16, 2009: Deep Sky Ranch

Greg LaFlamme

It was another great night at Willow Springs. I really enjoy observing at DSR with this particular group. Kevin Ritschel, Steve Gottlieb, Mark Wager, Mark Johnston and Richard Navarrete. With a group like this, there is no shortage of objects to see and things to learn or fun to be had. The weather was very comfortable. I was in shorts, tee-shirt and sandals until 12:30 or so. I wanted to observe at least 50 objects that night but because of a broken phone jack, my dsc's were out of commission. That's ok though, I went into star-hopper mode and managed to log 31 objects. (prolly saw over 50 though) Saturn again was like a computer generated image! It had multi colored banding and a rings like a knife-edge! Yow!! I had a list of goodies to see including some of my all-time favorites like M100, NGC 4051 and 3893. All three giving up spiral structure and mottling. Near NGC 3893 I found a galaxy not shown in Urano Metria or ST3. I'll have to research that one a bit. The night was very steady (+/- 1") and stars showed well at high powers.

Once the Ring (M 57) got high enough, I magged up to 574x and went after the central star. Got it! The seeing was hit n miss but the tiny star could be glimpsed for about 1 out of every 15 seconds. This marks the lowest altitude site that I've ever seen that star from. Nice! After picking off many objects from my list, I couldn't resist peeking on the summer goodies. The Trifed was detailed and spooky! The "pillars of creation" in M 16 were not only visible but had a luminous glow around them!! Never seen that before.. M 22 at 87x was a heck of a site. Normally I'd look at that glob at higher power but with a 26 Nagler/ Parracor, I really enjoyed the 55 second wide f.o.v! There is was, floating in a rich dusty field of stars- simply magical. Thank goodness I thought to look at the ink-spot, it paid off big-time, paired with that beautiful open cluster, it was memorable! Steve reminded me to look at M 5 and I'm glad he did, it was sugar on powdered sugar! There is a nice chain of brighter stars crossing the center of the giant glob. Even now, if I blink my eyes really fast, I can still see it:-) Over in Cygnus, the Veil was putting on a show of its own. Richard and I made a nice little ( non-scientific ) comparison of filters. We switched between a Lumicon OIII and NPB filters. Both filters showed different aspects of this event, both great filters, both worth while to have. I will add an NPB to my collection. I didn't bother comparing it to my UHC, that would have been a better comparison.

Kevin gave us a shocking view of Centaurs A. The center of the thick bisecting dark lane was clearly illuminated like we see in astrophotos and the outer edges appeared scalloped. Steve used the term "waves" and I believe that's a better description. Like the kids say "it was sick dude" :-) Steve then brought up a nice challenge object for my 22" scope and eyes. NGC 5614 is super imposed over one of its neighbors, 5613. We were able to separate the the two galaxies at 330x. We saw the rest of its family as well. NGC 5613 jumped right into the boat but 5609 was a 75% averted vision object on this night. The moon crashed the party all too soon and I was off to bed.

Thanks to my pals for a darn great night and a big thanks Kevin, for hosting us again!

For those interested, here are a few pictures from the trip: http://www.fototime.com/inv/753D717CEB20616

GML