February 13, 2010: Deep into Dino

Greg LaFlamme

It's been a couple months since I'd been out observing so I went through my mental prep-list very carefully. Once I have the truck all packed, I take a moment and look over each "unit" of equipment. The scope, clothing, charged battery, repair kit and so on. I look over the scope and imagine its assembly, looking for each part as I go. Eyepieces? check- I got see and observe with many great tac'os that I just don't get to see very often. It was great to see Bob Jardine, George Feliz, Jamie Dillon, Dave Cooper, Dan Wright, Carl Chang, as well as my new observing buds, Julien and Rogelio. It doesn't happen nearly enough. Rogelio, I love the calendar,, you rock! A couple of of my all-time favorite observing buddies were present. Marky and Marko helped make the evening great. What a lucky bunch we are! Its not often do you get to sit with an AP155 and stare down Saturn? Thanks allot Dave:-) I made a short list of favorites and poked through many of them over the course of the night. Dew set in early and became downright wet shortly after the sky darkened. Having been dewed out so many times at DSR, I prepped my 22" f/3.6 with a full compliment of anti-dew do-daddery. With the help of Marko and Albert, I created a secondary heater from Radio Shack resistors and installed some Astro-zap eyepiece straps. The night was soaking wet but my scope was dry!! I ran the heater at the #10 setting for about ten minutes then cut it back to #4 for the rest of the night.

With a 26 Nagler and nearly a degree of fov, M 42 showed off the ruddy-red color of its wings and the trap was embedded in a bright green alcove of gas. Thor's helmet was gorgeous and much of the filamentary structure inside the dome was visible with an OIII filter. The Eskimo nebula packed some punch! At 462x it was bright and showed at least three internal concentric rings, similar to what you might see in a good "star-test" The face shape was eerie and easy to see. The sky was give and take for most of the evening and because completely toast by 11 or so. Many observers left because of this and as usual, their sacrifice provided us with a deep dark and mostly clear sky! Thank you all, you know who you are:-) SQM readings hit 21.28 in some portions of the sky and the more Southerly galaxy's were just starting to pop. I poked around Leo until 1:30 or so and made the 101 mile trip home by 3:00. Thanks to the whole gang for making it such a fun night and especially Mark Wagner for the hot coffee!

Bed: 37'44'35.48" / 122'14'19.23"
Evenly dispersed 1: 1.1 rectangle with a soft, warm but ill-defined core. I also noticed a 6/1 mottled clump along its southern edge,, I tried not to disturb it..:-)

GML