Observation Report -- 20-Feb-2007, Gott Observatory

I arrived just as the moon set on Tuesday night, at 10:25. Curt Pfarr and Don Fritz were each observing with their respective 66mm William Optics Triplet and 12.5" dob. Having packed my 6" dob in the car the night before, I left Lubbock Chorale practice, changed clothes at the gym and headed north as quickly as I could.
The wind was blowing a bit when I arrived, though, fortunately, it was leaving the ground and moving up above us. This made for very clear but turbulent skies -- a lot of twinkle, twinkle in the little stars, but more on that later.
Don & Curt were fixated on M42, and why not? It is the absolute showpiece of the Winter sky and this was our first observation outing for 2007. I set up my dob and put in the 25mm Antares Elite Plossl. Don and Curt both zoomed up the power on M42 with various sets of eyepieces (Curt with a PowerMate and 9mm BO/TMB and Don with a Meade 5.5 mm 5000 Plossl). The air simply couldn't handle such high powered views. We resigned ourselves to being able to get five stars out of the Trapezium, the elusive 6th remaining invisible.
I dug down into the muck of the western horizon and came up with a pathetic rendition of M31. At Don's urging, we had more luck with M76, the Little Dumbbell, but we all thought, 'little' is right. Dumbbell Minus, more like it. Karkoschka writes “faintest Messier Object.” We believe him.
M45 was lassoed by Don with his Paragon 40mm and Curt with his little refractor, but I only observed it briefly through Don's. Before I knew it, Don was splitting Rigel, so Curt and I followed suit. Although it was quite tight in my scope with the TeleVue 11mm, I observed it at the 2 o'clock position just like in Don's big dob.
So Don & Curt, curious from this little experience with Rigel set their sights on Sirius to try and separate the Pup. The atmospheric turbulence combined with the extremely bright light of Sirius, and to a lesser extent Rigel, had a curious effect on the eye. Chromatic aberration was apparent as the star cycled from bright to somewhat dimmer and back to bright again, like a silver coin at the bottom of a wave-filled fountain. An effect of walking the deck of a ship in rough seas, the ripples of turbulent, churning atmosphere above us caused a tossing of brightness in the eyepiece on these stars. No sign of the Pup.
The bright siren call was interrupted when I put my scope on the Double Cluster. Don and Curt had already observed them earlier, but Curt couldn't resist putting his small refractor back on them for another view of these beauties. Indeed they were, in both Curt's 66mm and my 6", too. We studied the four or five (or six in Don's 12.5") stars of the 'cup' portion. Nice.
I searched out M1 and it showed up nicely in my 6", much better than the Little Dumbbell. Don & I resolved the myriad geometric patterns of M44. Saturn then captivated our gaze, but the turbulent atmosphere limited us to lower powered views. But Saturn never disappoints, and this time was no different. Don then picked out NGC 2392, the Eskimo Nebula. I tried and tried to no avail. Finally, I broke down and looked through Don's Telrad. There was the problem, too close to Wasat. 2392 was over 4 degrees away. With a bit of slewing I was on it, too. Needless to say, Don's image was the best, with distinct core and 'hood' in his 14mm Meade UltraWide 5000, but mine in the 15mm TeleVue Plossl wasn’t half bad, either. And that’s how we started looking at M51, through my 6”. Of course, the best view belonged to Don’s 12.5” dob. Don’t remember when but I know Don observed M78 off Orion at some point.
But Curt moved our attention to M81/82. Curt’s little 66mm triplet did an outstanding job on this showpiece DSO. Of course, Don’s big dob gave it more flesh, my 6” being the intermediary. But Curt’s little refractor framed it nicely. Don and I had some initial difficulty putting it in the eyepiece. Don beat me, but I found the pair via the backdoor of first finding the more distant odd-man out of the threesome, NGC 3077. It was nice, though, to put M81 & NGC 3077 into the same fov in Don’s Paragon 40mm eyepiece. That really is a nice piece of glass.
We finished up on M35/NGC 2158. Honestly, Don’s 12.5” dob and the Paragon 40mm provided the best view of this cluster I’ve ever seen at the eyepiece. Really outstanding.
The camaraderie was great and WAY overdue. We should have fun this coming Saturday night March 3rd for the full moon eclipse-ending public star party. Hope folks can make it out there.
Coelum serendum,
CDS