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Date: Sunday, September 2, 2007 Location: Emma Cemetery, Crosby County Conditions: semi-clear with passing cloudbanks. Moon at Last Quarter, not present, till 11:28 PM, mosquitos largely managed by DEET repellent Folks & equipment:
Collin Smith; 80ATED, 8mm BO/TMB Planetary, 15 & 20mm TV Plossls, 25mm
Antares Elite Plossl, 2” Orion 32mm Optiluxe, Celestron 2" O-III filter Neetu, Travis and I arrived later than I'd liked, around 9:15 PM. Neetu and I just couldn't pull ourselves away from the spectacular 1997 Titanic playing on TNT Saturday afternoon. Didn't end till 8:30, so I was a good 25 minutes late picking up Travis, but he was more than forgiving, being a die-hard Titanic aficionado himself. In fact we spent most of the trip absorbing his vast knowledge on the subject, having volunteered for the Titanic exhibit put on by the Science Spectrum this past Fall. Travis humbly asked us to please tell him we'd had enough, but Neetu and I were mesmerized with his stories of the Great Ship. We arrived at the Emma Cemetery, a long trip that seemed to fly by too quickly given the conversation. The darkness hadn't completely settled in, but it was getting hard to see the difference between the western light dome of the city vs the setting sun's twilight. Per Andersen already had his C8 set up and Don was just in the process of tearing down and putting his refractor back up. Don had unfortunately dinged his scope earlier that day, but had forgotten to look at the collimation, which, when he checked it at Emma, was way off. So he put it up. But Jupiter in Per's C8 with the Televue 20mm Plossl and all four Galilean moons present was spectacular! The cloud bands were evident with plenty of festooning. Ganymede was putting on a show just about to cross the globe of the Great Planet, at times looking like a strange circular appendage to Jupiter's principal sphere as it drew closer. I put the 8mm BO/TMB into my AT80ED for a view that wasn't too bad, when it wasn't jumping about the FOV. The wind was pretty bad for about the first 15 minutes of viewing, and my simple EQ-2 alt-az modified mount wasn't handling well at all. Fortunately, it calmed down and better views were forthcoming from my scope. I put the 25mm Antares Elite Plossl in and resolved the naked eye misty star cloud of M7 into a bunch o' stars. I had tried M80 when I first got there, but the sky wasn't quite dark enough to provide any good contrast and appeared washed out, but this M7 was nice. Per put M13, the Great Hercules Cluster, into his C8 with the 20mm TV Plossl and it was incredible! I thought it looked like dreadlocks wildly erupting from a Rastafarian, and Neetu remarked she saw a starfish, but everyone thought it looked just great. I gave a wide angle view of it in my AT80ED with the 15mm TV Plossl to provide some contrast, but the C8 really made M13 wonderful. Per then moved over to the Ring Nebula, M57, and everyone got an oooo out of that, too. The Ring just hung in space, very 3D like. Spectacular! I removed the 1.25" UO diagonal and installed my 2" Antares diagonal, 32mm Orion Optiluxe, and Celestron O-III filter and it was off to the Veil. One could actually get the whole thing in the FOV, but the edges of this eyepiece aren't well defined and it was better to take the huge Veil in two halves, top and bottom sections, to get all of its beauty in this wide field format. Dialing NGC 6960 into his NexStar controller, Per put the beautiful misty starred segment of the Veil with amazing, tendril nebular detail using a 40mm eyepiece and his Ultrablock filter. Unable to pan down to the other side due to the narrow FOV, he input NGC 6992 and we were examining the bright part sans star on the other side of the Veil. Again, the folds in the nebular cloud were astounding. After this, I put the North American Nebula in the eyepiece. The "Gulf of Mexico" portion showed up quite nicely, as it lay on its side and somewhat inverted. The Pelican was much less defined and really only a blob. After this, Per commanded his NexStar to find Neptune, which it dutifully did. Even using his 10mm Vixen Lanthanum, its appearance was just barely discernable. A disk, a star-point of light? Hmm, bluish Neptune takes some amazing aperture to really resolve worth a hoot. However, when Per directed his C8 to Uranus, the aqua disk was quite evident. With my 25mm Antares Elite Plossl, I stumbled over M16 in my search for the Swan Nebula, M17. I put the 8mm BO/TMB on that the Swan to give it more of an impression, and Per's C8 with 20mm TV Plossl delivered another stunning image. I sauntered down to the Lagoon Nebula, M8, for a wide angle view in the 25mm. Through the evening, Tom Heisey sat and looked through his binoculars, which Don, Per and Neetu also enjoyed as he gladly shared them, pointing them to interesting and beautiful sections of the sprawling Milky Way from Cassiopeia to Cygnus to Sagittarius. I finished my viewing with a nice framing of M31, M32 & M110, Andromeda and satellites, with the Antares Elite 25mm Plossl. As others began packing up and we all started talking, Neetu watched rising Luna of Last Quarter in fascination until the moon slipped behind some clouds. Neetu was ready to go, though, cause by now her layers of clothing were proving inadequate, and the encroaching clouds gave us little reason to stay. Another nice night observing at Emma. We were due. No icebergs. We returned to port safely.
From:
Collin Smith [mailto:collinofalabama@hotmail.com]
From:
Collin Smith [mailto:collinofalabama@hotmail.com]
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