No, we don't have an RV, but Rusty rents them for $50/night. The one we're in is quite comfortable. It even has in-bed electric heat, which is a nice thing when the temperature goes below freezing at night.
The reason for coming to this area was to do a bit of stargazing from a dark place. Jack Newton and a partner set up the Arizona Sky Village near Portal a few years back. They chose this location for its dark, transparent skies and good seeing. We haven't had ideal weather: the night skies have certainly been dark with pretty good transparency, but for the most part the seeing has been pretty bad. That's not the end of the world: bad seeing doesn't affect the views of large bright nebulae and galaxies all that much. Of course, having only a 110mm refractor severely limits how much one can see of faint, diffuse objects, but the scope is better than what Messier had to work with, so I really shouldn't complain.
Our neighbours at the next site, Bev and Wally, are from the Thousand Islands region of Ontario. I spent an hour the first evening showing Bev a few constellations, the zodiacal light, Jupiter, the M31 and M110 galaxies in Andromeda, the double cluster, the Orion nebula and a few others of the usual sights. That was fun, and gave me a chance to get myself oriented. Seeing was poor, so after Bev left, I looked for awhile longer at Orion and a few other sights, then went to bed.
I got up again around 3:30 am to look at the morning skies. Seeing was still bad, but much better than in the evening. I poked around a bit in Virgo looking for galaxies, but the views weren't great and the refractor is awkward to use near the zenith. I moved over to Ursa Major and found M81 and M82; I might have just seen dust lanes in M82, or I could have imagined them. The M108 galaxy and the Owl nebula fit easily in the same field of view with my 24mm Panoptic. Adding more magnificaton only served to make the outer parts of the Owl disappear; I couldn't bring out its eyes. I also failed to spot M109 near Phecda, and the Whirlpool was just a faint smudge. My brain tried very hard to find spiral arms in M101, but the way they kept shifting around, I don't think I saw any real structure.
I tried looking at Mars, but the poor seeing hid any features.
Eventually the moon rose: a very thin waning crescent. The earthshine was pretty to look at, as were some of the craters along the terminator. However, as the moon was shimmering a lot with the turbulence, after looking at it for a few minutes I went to bed.
Last night was better. I poked around a bit in the evening, looking at open clusters in Casseiopia. The refractor is better for that than my larger dobs, partly because of the lower magnification and wider field of view and partly because it gathers less light. In the dobs, most of the clusters are fully resolved and some don't fit within the field. Having the cluster stars resolved makes it hard to distinguish them from the general background of the milky way. With the refractor, many of the clusters look like grey fuzzy blobs, perhaps with a few resolved stars, and they stand out much better from the milky way background. I need to do more of that sort of observing to learn to properly appreciate the smaller scope. However, seeing was awful over most of the sky. The clear sky clock forecast improved seeing in the early morning, so around 8:30 pm I went to bed. I got up again at 3:30am and had two hours of good seeing and clear skies.
Under good skies, I was able to see any Messier object I looked for. I started low in the sky, trying to find the Eta Carina nebula, but trees and the low angle conspired to keep me from finding it in the scope. I thought I found it in binoculars a couple of times, but even that was uncertain. I moved up the sky to M68, a globular cluster just below Corvus. I found it right away as a grey smudge with the 24mm Panoptic; putting in the 13mm Ethos resolved a few stars, but the whole cluster appeared so much fainter that I enjoyed the view more with the 24mm. That was true of many of the objects I looked at over the course of the morning. I moved over to M83, the Seashell Galaxy, which I had never seen before because it is so low in the sky from BC that it gets lost in the soup. I found it easily and could even see how it got its name: a line of stars along one edge of the galaxy shape looks a bit like a snail, with the galaxy appearing as a shell on its back. A hint of spiral structure in the galaxy (at least with averted vision) adds to the impression of a shell. Moving up the sky again, M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, was also an easy find. I could see the central bulge and a very faint hint of the sombrero shape, but the view wasn't great. Still, I thought I could make out some of the nearby NGC galaxies, so I was encouraged to move back down to Corvus to look for NGC4038 and 4039, the Antenna galaxies. I'm pretty sure I found the pair, plus NGC 4027, but all I could see was a bit of fuzziness around the core and even then, only with averted vision. So they didn't look like much. I wandered over to Leo and quickly found M95, M96 and M105 as a nice set in the 24mm eyepiece. The contrast between the edge on and face on spirals was pleasing to look at. M65 and M66 were likewise easy to find below Chertan in Leo's back leg. The third member of the triplet was no more than a very small region of fuzziness around its stellar core.
I tried looking at Saturn, but seeing wasn't quite steady enough to let me find the Cassini division with such a small scope.
Once I moved into Virgo, I immediately got lost. My refractor has no finder scope, so I'm never quite sure where it's pointing. That's rarely a big problem when I'm looking for a solitary object or group of objects: I just sweep around until I find what I expect to see. WIth so many objects in Virgo, the problem is that there are always one or more galaxies in the field of view, but it's very hard to know which ones I'm looking at. That is further complicated by the fact that I don't know the scope very well yet and I have no experience with the skies from this site, so I don't know how faint an object I can expect to see. Suffice to say that I saw a lot of galaxies in Virgo: certainly more than Messier listed, but I have no idea which was which. I wished I had with me the excellent photo published in SkyNews or Sky and Telescope last year; that would at least have clearly distinguished face on from edge on spirals and both of those from the ellipticals, which would be a big help in trying to identify groups of galaxies and so get oriented. Oh well, perhaps I'll get out to Hope Slide with a big scope after we get back and get a chance to learn the Virgo cluster better.
I would have loved to move up into Coma Berenices, but it was right at the zenith where it is almost impossible to point this scope, so I gave up. I made another attempt to find the Eta Carina nebula, which had risen a bit higher in the sky by then. When I realized that I was looking for it in the northwest when I should have been looking nearly due south, I decided it was time to go to bed. All in all, quite a satisfying two hour session. It would be nice to be here sometime when seeing is good, rather than just OK.
Still sounds like some good observing. Tell you what - some day we will all meet in Arizona when there are clear skies. It has been decades since I visited Arizona and I would love to go back.
ReplyDeleteIt has been pretty good. I'm trying not to do my usual routine of being most interested in the things I can't quite see.
ReplyDeleteAs for meeting in Arizona: that would be fun. Or we could all book a weekend at Jack Newton's B&B and save six days of driving :-)
I should add a not about yesterday's viewing. It was cloudy and windy all day and the clear sky clock forecast no observing all night. However, around 9pm the clouds cleared and the wind died down and I was able to get in an hour of observing before clouds came back.
ReplyDeleteTransparency must have been very good, because I could see the flame nebula with direct vision, including some of the dust lanes. Based on my view of the horsehead through a 20" scope at Merritt in September, I'm pretty sure I could make out the edge of the cloud that the horsehead is in, though the rest of the nebula wasn't bright enough to show the horsehead feature. Seeing even that much through a small scope is pretty impressive though.