November 14, 2009: Deep Sky Ranch

Greg LaFlamme

Ole' DSR held true to its namesake and gave us a wonderful sky to romp-around in. I won't list the names because Mark Wagner took care of that already. Although finally meeting Tony Hurtado was a pleasure. Neat guy! Seeing was really good overall and I was able to use magnifications from 330 to 462x most of the night. Transparency was very good albiet not perfect. There was allot more light dome seen than usual and the SQM agreed with my suspicions. Readings were 21.30 early on to 21.45 later in the evening. The nights low temperature was 26 degrees but it didn't feel that cold. Only a small amount of dew formed and created a thin ice sheet on my eyepiece case. Our host (and buddy) Kevin Ritschel stunned us with views of NGC 1187, 1260 as well as the crab. In my 22" f3.6, with an OIII fitler, the crab shows incredible detail. The normally bland and oval potato became irregular in shape and large filaments cris-cross Inside the nebula. Smaller ffilaments extend outward in every direction from the lager ones. Just fantasic in a 22" but then, I looked at it in Dobzilla, a 33" photonic vacuum system and OMG!! M1 now took on the appearance of a natural sponge! The detail was mind blowing. I almost forgot that I was at the top of a 12' ladder. I may have to build a 36" scope;-) I joined Mark Wagner and Richard Navarette on some nice tough Hickson groups. Hik 1, 3 and 8. We took prisoners :-) Steve Gottlieb mentioned the NGC 68 group and provided me with a sheet. I couldn't remember if I had seen it before. Turns out I had, however I'm glad I looked again, I picked up another galaxy in between NGC 68 and 69. I caught MCG+ 5-1-64 sneaking in. Party-crasher! I sketched the field and identified the intruder once I got home. Reading Julien's OR forced me to write this OR and mention that group. Latly I haven't been inspired to write OR's, prolly cuzza laziness.From the OR's I've read, it sound like we all got in a good one.

Congrats to everyone tough enough to go out and use their scopes. Thanks again to Kevin for having us up!

GML