January 13, 2010: Mom and Sis under the Stars

Mark Johnston

My sister who is visiting from Wisconsin and my mother have been curious about what one sees through my scope which stands taller than myself. Last night was the only possible shot considering their schedules and the weather outlook so a trip to Henry Coe was decided upon about 2pm with Sat images indicating some chance at success.

Conditions were IMHO wonderful enough to give my two family members are fine look at big eye candy. Conditions would have been called variable and not the best of the best by the rest of us TACos. There was a haze-over for about 20 minutes around 8:30 but it cleared up and I was able to proceed with a few more targets. I covered most all the targets I had hopped to cover and both 'noobs' had a great time.

When we got to Coe already present were from South to North Julien, Rogelio, Paul Duncan, Jeff Weiss and several very tall mounds of gravel which remained uninterrested in the night sky most of the night.

It was clear at that time so I wasted no time and setup the 18" f/3.7 dob and also 120mm Orion refractor for the wide eye candy. Here is what we looked at yesterday which should be no surprise.

We started with a general discussion of north/south and shape of Orion and Cassiopeia both of which my sister not only knows of but also knows the shape. My sister has been through many 'tracker classes' and the do discuss star navigation to some extent. Those classes cover tracking for the sake of living in the wild and finding your way back out of the wild and are not hunting classes. Because of an old movie that the whole family enjoyed many years ago we started calling Cassiopeia 'Da big douba-ya' (you can guess the title).

I used no tracking for the night and that gave both of my guests a much better feel for how we are rotating on Earth. Also by the time we left my sister remarked on how the rotation was a lot more dramatic than she had expected in terms of Orion's position and the now well emerged bowl of 'the big dipper' by 9:20pm.

M42 Orion Nebula This one got a couple 'Oh my' replies from the new kids on the block.

Ngc7789 This Cas target is one of my favorites and I was so happy that both of them were amazed that such blankets of fine stars were out there.

M46/Ngc2488 Before looking at this I had used 7789 as the segway into this and explained that this one was similar but would have a donut within it and told them were to look. Because this was very low it was a bit mucky and not sharp but the donut was seen by my sister. We did not use filters and that would have helped but cut out stars so I left the stars in for them.

M31 & friends This one generated lively discussion including how to prepare for when M31 and our galaxy merge. I assured them there was no need to rush the preparations. My sister was able to see the dark lanes but my mom was not and told me she would have to lie to say she saw them (from this we conclude she is 'honest at the eyepiece'). My mom being 85 has cateracts in progress so I suspect that cut down her abilities to some extent.

M45, Pleiades. My sister had been asking about this one almost from the start of our trip out to Coe. Here I used the much wider field Orion ST120 and correct image prism. This was almost at zeneth but framed nicely and I told her that to recognize it (which she did) she would have to stand on one side of the scope to orient her head nicely so North was 'up' in her view. She very much enjoyed this and later stated that M31 and Pleiades were here favorites.

Ngc869/Ngc884 Double Cluster: This was also best viewed with the 120mm scope and my sister who had already recognized the more orange color of some stars enjoyed this one because there are several orange stars.

Mars Questions on 'what is that real bright one and so on led to very early discussions on Mars but it was so low and there was muck so I waited till the end to even try for Mars. Some features were noted by my my guests but IMHO the view was very turbulent and poor.

We then packed it all up (I packed it all up but they helped a little because they wanted to help). Auriga and M33 would have to wait for another night but I was happy to have squeezed in all of the above on such a short session. My mom was well past her normal hours of operation and I did not want to overdo this session.

All in all I was very glad to have a nice enough sky to really give them both a 'Star Party' experience that will stay in their memories.

Marko

PS: I was glad I brought my mom and sister because that tilted the scale as follows:

Visual Observers: 4 - Imagers: 3 Boo - rah! ;-)