From: Collin Smith [mailto:CollinofAlabama@cox.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 11:12 PM
Subject: Observation Report for Saturday night, November 11th, 2006
Don called me right at 6:10 PM. I was just getting out of the shower, and he
said the winds were terrible. I suggested we wait an hour, check outside, and
perhaps try then. That sounded good to him. I got on the computer and checked
the forecast, which didn’t look very promising, but I hoped. At 7:10, Don called
back and said the winds were better now and we decided to go to Emma. This
turned out to be a fortuitous decision, since Sunday was quite windy with a lot
of upper atmospheric cloudiness.
My good friend Tom English called me just as I was heading out so I picked him
up. I must thank Neetu Arora for her assistance in finding four screws that fit
my mount at Sutherland’s on my way to drop her off and pick up Tom English.
Without her efforts, my scope wouldn’t have worked Saturday night at all. Yay,
Neetu! When we arrived around 8:30, Don and Tom Heisey were setting up and I
quickly followed suit. Within no time flat, I was setup and ready to go. Don
finished collimating, and we were off.
Don started things off with a view of the Double Cluster in Perseus (NGC
884/869) with his recently re-engineered 12.5” dob. Heisey followed Don’s high
power view with a nice, complementary view that an excellent build quality 4”
APO can afford. Pinpoint stars and vivid coloration. I put my 25mm Elite Plossl
in for a very wide 2.36° field of view perspective in my AstroTech 80ED. Each
scope produced an interesting image of the Double Cluster.
Heisey continued on with various open clusters and asterism ‘discoveries’
throughout the night. Finding a nice triple star asterism near Aquila, Tom
followed this up uncovering M29 in Cygnus, NGC 7789 in Cassiopeia and M71 in
Sagitta. I looked these up later. Tom didn’t know what they were and didn’t
care. His “I know what’s I like” attitude was refreshing and helped reveal a lot
of very nice objects for the group with an instrument designed for such a
pleasant night space walk.
But Don’s 12.5” dob stole the show. First, his excellent Meade 12.5” primary now
has a new, smaller secondary he recently installed with a resulting increase in
contrast. His addition of a TeleVue Paracorr also helped to make the views this
scope throws up that much nicer.
The REAL difference with the scopes immediately showed up on Uranus. I had
wanted to catch both Neptune and Uranus, but Neptune in Capricornus disappears
into the muck pretty early in the evening. Our later starting time pretty much
ruled out bringing Neptune up to the eyepiece’s surface. The God of the Blue
Depths would remain concealed this evening.
But Uranus, very near Lambda Aquarii was much higher up. I took the helm of the
big dob and in no time flat, Uranus beamed at us brightly. Don’s scope made
Uranus very apparent, even with a 26mm Meade Series 5000 Plossl. Relatively low
power was enough to do the trick. The image was much better than Heisey or I
could eeck out of our much smaller apertures, regardless of the eyepiece used. I
tried my 8mm Plossl, but the winds, which were bad enough on the ground,
precluded high power viewing. Indeed, the upper atmospheric disturbance that
night was significant, limiting high powered viewing. But the transparency was
FANTASTIC, and the 12.5” dob showed the way. When Don put in the 16mm Meade 5000
SuperWide, the view got that much better. We couldn’t go higher, but that image
was quite nice. My own scope’s view at 15mm was as good as I would try it, but
it was very clear what aperture did for the view to all four of us.
I decided to pick up those nice, remaining Summer delights low in the west. The
Dumbbell Nebula, M27, was nice in my little AT80ED, but I couldn’t resist
putting Don’s big gun on it, and man, was that something. Everyone had to come
over to the scope when I went “Whoa!” And that sums up the view. Excellent
detail as the gaseous veils revealed the Dumbbell shape.
From there, we decided upon the much lower M57. Again, Don’s scope inspired true
awe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Ring Nebula better, and it was even lower
than the Dumbbell. But that was some image. Photographs don’t really capture the
naked eye experience a well engineered 12.5” scope can throw up to the eyepiece.
Tom Heisey and I decided to attempt to catch Comet Swan. We had great difficulty
trying to pick out the Keystone, Hercules being way west of us. In fact, most of
Hercules had already set, but Tom via binoculars, and I with the AT80ED found a
faint fuzzy worth investigating. Using Don’s massive light gathering beast, we
were able to discern that the ‘comet’ we had hoped for would, in fact, resolve
down to a granulated globular cluster. Oh well, we’ll have to try for Swan in
the early evening.
Don put the Blue Snowball Nebula, NGC 7662, into the eyepiece and we were wowed
again. I steered the scope back west and put the bright globular M15 into the
eyepiece. The layers visible and the resolution attained were stunning. The VERY
bright core stood out, and the layers of stars had an almost spidery
M37-on-steroids effect.
On to M31, and the galaxy has rarely been seen better. Wow! The dust lane at the
top of the galaxy was quite apparent. M110 glowed in an unparalleled way, and
M32 was its small, dense, bright self. This was amazing to see.
We turned to the East and pulled out M1 and M42. Again, though limited by the
seeing to lower powers, we couldn’t resolve the Trapezium down to more than 4
stars, but the tendrils of clouds the big dob threw up were spectacular. The
separation between M42 & M43 was quite nice as well. Tom had shown us all M42
earlier with his Nebula filter in the 4” TeleVue. It was a good image, but not
like the big dob, of course.
Heisey put NGC 457, the ET Cluster, into the TeleVue’s eyepiece and we enjoyed
our parting celestial vista. It was after 11:30 PM and the wind had taken its
toll on all of us. The moon began to peek over the horizon. We packed up the
scopes and said goodbye. Tom English specifically pointed out that this had been
his best viewing experience yet at Emma, and I’d have to agree, at least for the
targets we observed. We drove away as the moon, having climbed up into the sky,
showed us the way. Please make sure to get a look through Don’s new and improved
scope next Star Party you can. The views are GREAT and worth every minute at the
eyepiece.
-----Original Message-----
From: Collin Smith [mailto:collinofalabama@cox.net]
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 6:44 PM
Subject: Satruday night, east of town
Folks,
Heading to Emma to look at stars this Saturday evening, Veterans Day 2006.
Please join us if you can. I want to get to this early to try and catch the
comet, Neptune and Uranus. I have some pretty good maps of each and they'll
all be fairly high up early on. The sun sets tomorrow at 5:48, so it should
be good and dark an hour later. I intend to arrive around 6:30 and stay till
I'm tired.
Hope to see some of you out there, too. Don't be scared of an old Cemetery.
CDS
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