June 28, 2009: GSSP 2009 as experienced by Astrospotter

Mark Johnston

First off enough cannot be said about the folks who put together and made this GSSP an organized delight. Just an amazing job and a show of how it is easy to miss just how well something is put together when it is done oh so right. It was seamlessly smooth even after such a harsh 1st test of the tents on Saturday night. Well done and Thanks!

And now on with this little OR that touches on highlights rather than a full list of my observations made at GSSP, that not being ready just yet in any case.

Drove up to GSSP Sunday so I missed the 'excitement' of Saturday but I bet it was a true bonding experience.

Got to GSSP about 7pm Sunday and missed dinner but not the great night! (my bad for not judging the drive time properly). Very much enjoyed the wonderful sights between Redding and GSSP with Mt Shasta, Lassen and all the trees and river views. I had been at PlettStone observatory the night before but that is another OR.

At GSSP I used my tried and true StarMaster 18" f/3.7 scope and generally a 13mm Nagler as a finder then the 7mm or 5mm nagler for observations. Generally only use the ParaCorr Limiting mag was in 6.8/6.8 area with sky darkness generally 21.6 to 21.7 or above. The milky way impacts this value in my narrow field SQM meter by lowering the SQM about 0.1 or so.

I am judging limiting mag by a nice, high set of stars from mag 5.9 - 6.8 found 2.8 degrees SSE of Epsilon Bootes and then a 6.8/6.9/7.2 triangle 1.6 degrees to the East. For bay area skies it is also nice to use a handy 2 degree length rectangle that is 4.8 degrees ESE of Epsilon Bootes with mags from 4.5 through 5.8 but that was not needed at GSSP. Sunday Night: Setup and then warmed up with some Herschel II objects which included a nice diversion near Ngc4270 of the sort of galaxy cluster I have come to enjoy over the last year. The center of the 16 minute field I liked is about Ngc4273 and contains quite a mix of sizes, magnitudes, and position angles so is certainly now a 'favorite' FOV of mine.

Moved on to a ring of galaxies that sits adjacent to the north of M101 (M101 of course is always a 'wow'). There are 7 NGC galaxies and two fairly bright field stars that form this 1 degree diameter loop. Starting at Ngc5473 that is 30' NNE of M101 we loop CW through 5484/5485, 5486, a mag 8 field star, 5475, 5443, then drop 25' SSW to a mag 8.7 field star and end the loop 15' south of that at Ngc5422 which is a decent mid-sized rather elongated galaxy to make for a nice finale.

Monday: In the day it was nice to walk about and take panorama shots of the ranchland areas to the North complete with large pond and then the ranchland to the southwest. Of course Mt Shasta was shot both in the day as well as the eve. The showers were a gift from the heavens and I was amazed and just what a treat that these 'other dimension' showers were. You step into one and you are 'at home' step out refreshed to see the gorgeous countryside with a blanket of astronomy gear getting ready for the dark skies. Gotta love that.

Monday night: This night I had moved my setup over to Saturn/Uranus row and there I found many of the TACos I tend to observe with much of the time in the bay area. Was nice to be 'at home'. Besides the great chats I broke up this night with around 20 Herschel II list objects and a detailed look at Ngc7008, the 'Fetus Nebula'. What an odd object and an object that gave up much detail in the 18". Monday night is when I broke out my Canon 40D on an Atlas Eq-6 mount and used an Orion starshoot autoguider through an 80mm f/3.7 'finder'. Used PHD guiding software and have since donated to that product, a job well done. Took 6 degree fields using 200mm prime focus lens of M24/swan and dark nebula around 'snake nebula'. Images may be seen by anyone (without flickr account too) at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/astrospotter/

Tuesday Night: This busy night was for Hickson objects including 55 in Dra, 56 in UMa, 82 in Her and the very low 86 in Sag. My favorite of this night was Hickson 56 selected by it's range of shapes and effort it took to pull out the mag 16.4 E member and the mag 16.2 A member. I was unable to note the very dim mag 16.8 D member as it is adjacent to the mag 15.8 C member and is 'rather dim and small'. This object required mag up to 483 with my 3.5mm that I save for the most difficult of tiny objects but seems to pull through in dark enough skies.

While on difficult items I used mag 555 with my 3.5mm in a ParaCorr on M57 and was pulling out the central star with averted for 6 second or more intervals at a time that were overall 40% or more of the time observed. Only other time I have seen this was at Bumpass last year.

Took what I call a 'star trek' starting from Ngc5438 and looping in a 16' radius arc CCW around a mag 6.4 star 18' to the west of 5438 to catch 14 objects before hitting Ngc5409 that completes 60% of a full circle. Some of these are at mag 15.7 which is a testimony to the sky quality.

It was now time for a few nice Cyg planitary nebula pointed out by Sue French in the July article. Ngc6894 indeed was like a small diamond ring with a field star as the diamond. Ngc7026 was easily showing it's dual-lobe with my 5mm Tak LE view (338x) being perhaps best. Ngc7027 which is an early-on planitary showed it's rectangular form nicely. Finished off the PN session with Ngc7048 being a bit larger at 1' dia and showing a ring type hollowed out center. No central 19mag star seen in 7048, just as Sue predicted.

Next I moved on to observe about 10 of the central members of Abell Galaxy Cluster 2199 in Her. The pattern here seemed to be lines of 3 in more than one case and all 10 observations besides the very large Ngc6166 were tiny 30" or so dim objects.

Some eye candy this night at GSSP included Ngc7331 with all 4 fleas. Moved on to close shop after Ngc7320, Stephan's Quintet which I like to visualize as a 2-pilot jet-fighter racing west across the eyepiece and ngc7317 being a recently released rocket. Ok, it is a 'guy' image but it is fun to watch the jet move across the FOV.

Thanks again to all the folk that put together GSSP 2009 and made it a great star party to be remembered.

Mark Johnston