May 16, 2009: DARC visit and a blue horse

Rogelio Bernal Andreo

I arrived at DARC at 8:20pm. I was fearing strong winds would make the night a challenge to my imaging session, and was considering other options, but in the end I still decided to go, as I was planning a wide FOV, where moderately strong wind isn't so much of a problem, and I already knew DARC had every other quality I was looking for (dark skies, very low horizons E->S, etc)

But oh surprise... When I arrived it was 80F and barely any wind. The wind died down completely after a little while, and the temperature sat at 70F around 10pm, staying that way with <1 degree changes over the night.

Lee was inside in the west dome for most of the time with a friend, while Julien and I were outside. Nobody else showed up. Nice seeing all night, and average transparency that was getting better as the night went on, like Julien reported yesterday.

I went after IC4592, "the other horsehead", the large 3 degrees reflection nebula in Scorpius, a bit above the Rho Ophicius area, with the FSQ+reducer/STL11k (5.5x3.3 degrees FOV). Managed to get a good chunk of luminance, some very basic RGBs (not in my original plan but wanted to go home with some color) and about 1 hour worth of Ha by the time the Moon came out and said hi. While still a work in progress, here's the "stamp sized" version so far: http://deepskycolors.com/pics/astro/2009/05/md_2009-05-16_IC4592.jpg

Left DARC at 4:25am and arrived home at 6:10am. That part, right there, I don't recommend. Better stay and catch some z's before driving back.