February 17, 2010: Another successful trip to DSR

Greg LaFlamme

With most of my equipment still packed in my truck from my last Dino trip, I headed out for DSR. The CSC and NOAA were promising and frankly, I can't remember how many seemingly cloudy nights became clear after sunset. Also, I'm a month away from moving to Arizona and I wanted to spend as much time with my favorite observing buddies as possible. I arrived early, mainly to beat traffic. I love the whole "Willow Springs" countryside anyway and could easily spend an entire day just looking around. I got to spend allot of time chatting with Kevin Ritschel, our host for the evening. We discussed his eclectic collection of scopes and the importance of maintaining a friendly existence with neighbors. Its important to do so, especially out in the country. I have some of the same concerns with my move and Kevin's advice was appreciated. Mark Johnston arrived after a short time and I was glad to see him. I wasn't sure it the weather would keep him away but I had my fingers crossed. It worked :-) With clouds in the sky and a thin crescent moon exiting stage-West, I could see some improvement to the sky overhead. After darkness set in, Mark Wagner and Richard Navarrete arrived. Crossing my fingers worked better than I thought:-) The party was on! Johnston was a busy-bee, filling his dso basket with goodies. We shared views throughout the night. He also helped me understand batteries a bit more by measuring the current draw of my heating system. Thanks buddy! Now I can make an informed battery purchase. Wagner always has the best objects in his scope. Just cool stuff I wouldn't think to look at on my own. His comments force me notice the details and I love that! Thats how we learn.. Richard is taking on the Hickson's with much success and working a group with him is something I thoroughly enjoy. His equatorial platform works really well. I may have to make one for myself. From around 10:00 onward, the sky was very rewarding. SQM reading went from 21.37 to a "creepy dark" 21.61 by 11:30 or so. Galaxies were on fire! Thor's helmet was ablaze like I've never seen it before. The ghost of Jupiter was a show-stopper! At 462x, it was bright green with no less than 5 distinct concentric rings inside. The "eye" shaped filament surrounding the central void was thin and white in color, surrounding a pin-prick central star. Despite its low elevation, I had never seen it in such detail. My scope was in the best physical position to see it and we all took turns looking at it. I went after eye candy all night with the exception of Hickson 37, 40 and 41. Richard got me all into those groups and it was rewarding. Mark Wagner was looking at the intergalactic wanderer in his scope so I joined in. I'm not sure what his magnification was but It was obviously granular, with 5-10 twinkling super imposed stars. It was an excellent view considering that glob is 300 ly distant. I toured the bright Messier galaxies both at medium and high powers, teasing out the details. I moved around inside M 106 at 330x and it gives up tons of mottling and wispy little dark lanes near the core. M 99 and 100 showed their grand designs with authority. I re-visited Abell 21, the Medusa nebula. It was a great night for a filter shootout on that object. I have an adapter on the back of my focuser that allows me to change filters without removing the eyepiece so swapping filters was easy. The UHC filter did really well. I was very happy with the view until I borrowed Richard's NBP filter. It made the details stand out just a tad better on that object. The OIII was the hands-down winner. The Medusa popped! This may not hold true in smaller aperture instruments but in a 22" the results were clear. I may add the NBP filter to my arsenal but I'd like to experiment some more first. After all, I just invested in a 2" upgrade to my H-beta filter. My last object was M 51. High in the sky, the view of that pair was downright moving. Really.. About 35 objects were logged, mostly eye candy that I can't get enough of. Once I move to AZ, I'll get back on track of taking out Urano-Metria page by page.

Unfortunately, I had to leave DSR around 1:00AM to be at my DMV appointment in the morning. The drive home was nice and as miles went by, the sky got brighter:-( The dang of it is, when my wife an I arrived at the DMV at 9:30 this morning, it was closed!! Evidently, they had a plumbing leak that had flooded out the place. I was in no mood to fix it :-)

Thanks guys for showing up and making it so fun and thanks again to Kevin for hosting what turned out to be an event!

GML