Date:  24 October 2008

Location:  Emma Cemetery in Crosby County

Equipment:  Don Fritz’ 10” Meade-mirrored custom dobsonian, 8 & 13mm Ethos eyepieces

            Michael Moreno’s Meade 8” GEM reflector with the TV Panoptic 35mm

            Per Andersen’s 8” SCT and Orion 120ST refractor

            Your humble narrator’s 8” Meade LightBridge truss dob, TV Pan 19 & 24mm, Pentax 12mm XF and BO/TMB 6mm eyepieces.

I got a phone call from Michael Moreno on my cell phone at work.  Hadn’t heard a peep out of Michael for a long time, but he was eager to see the skies of Emma for himself, and what a pleasant surprise this was.  I told him how to get out there, and he arrived long before I did.  I picked up Travis and we arrived at Emma at about 7:30.  Don Fritz was 5 minutes behind us.  We all shook hands and got down to finalizing equipment setup.  Michael and Per, who had arrived much earlier, started observing.  I heard them say something about M2 & M5, I think, but I was too busy collimating my scope to go look.

We observed these targets in more or less this order: 

Before they got too far low into the muck, we got the Sagittarian fare of the Lagoon Nebula, M8, and Swan Nebula, M11

Wild Duck Cluster M11

Neptune – ho hum;  wow, what a difficult target, and disappointing in its final capture at the eyepiece.  It’s amazing to think it was discovered in 1846 from LeVerrier’s mathematical deductions.

Uranus – much more interesting.  Uranus actually presents an identifiable disk.  No guessing about its nature.  That’s a big, distant planet, for sure.

Jupiter – through Don’s 10” with the 8mm Ethos was absolutely spectacular.  Wow!  What a functional, sharp eyepiece.  In this large aperture it produced one spectacular image.

Ring Nebula, M57

Dumbell Nebula, M27 – again, in Don’s 13mm Ethos, this nebula was awe inspiring.

Andromeda Galaxy System, M31, M32 & M110  -- in Don’s 13mm Ethos, the dust lane in M31 was quite evident.  Another noteworthy image.  I could see the dust lane in my LB after knowing where to look, but it was an obvious feature in Don’s 10”

Double Cluster NGC869 & NGC884

Hercules Cluster M13

Peiades, M45 – Wow!  Through Per’s 120ST, this cluster was magical.  What a fantastic view.  Refractor sharp

Albireo  -- I put this one in the eyepiece as a going away present.  Everyone was breaking down there scope, so I just popped this guy in.  Michael got the last view and then we went home.

I received this email from Jerry Hatfield regarding observing at Emma the following night, Saturday, October 25, 2008.

Collin,

Actually....we had a splendid night of Emma's heavenly lights (I also see what you mean by the extra lights on southeast and southern horizon!!! Ugh!!!). No wind at all! And after applying a measureable amount of mosquito repellent around our ears, neck and face, we had not even one buzz near us. After the few minutes it took to set up the scope we went right to work pulling in Venus, and later, Jupiter and its satellites. From there, we really got down to business with the aid of the trust Object Locator (I just love these gadgets for getting deep sky jewels fast and accurately. It makes for a great time in showing first-timers the wonders of the night sky. We pulled in a few of the classics like M 27, 57, 13, 31, 33, 81, 82, the Blinking Planetary, Saturn Nebula, Perseus Double Cluster, Wild Duck Cluster (M ?), Veil Nebulae, Double Double in Lyra, Albireo's beautiful double and a host of other open and globular clusters (these are among my favorite sky gems). Then we went deeper into Pegasus to get a couple of glances and NGC 7331 (some turbulence in upper atmosphere made this galaxy not as pristine as I've seen it before at Sky View), Helix Nebula (very nice) and of course one of my all-time favorite galaxies: NGC 253 is Sculptor. We also got some views of the North American Nebula and observed the Pole Star through binos - a nice solitaire in the western part of a ring of stars. We also pulled in a few of the densely packed star fields strewn across the black landscape of the milky way swathe. By 9:25p, we has seen so much already it seemed later and so we continued until about 10:20p, whereupon we commenced to packing up for the trip home. In all, it was a great night!

Jerry