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A Note from the President - March 17 - 20, 2004
Our 5th annual Mid Florida Star Gaze has come and gone, and I believe that for once, we were properly prepared for the event in advance. Everything worked out perfectly, even the weather was in full cooperation. We had three nights of ideal viewing, and three days of mild and sunny conditions. Months earlier, my wife (Willette) had offered her culinary skills to feed the entire star party, and she had been working herself to the point of exhaustion for the last couple of weeks. It may not seem like it at first thought, but creating ten tasty and nutritious meals for twenty four people under near wilderness conditions is no small task. She had no sink or running water, but there was enough electricity to run a small refrigerator and a couple of coffee pots. All cooking had to be done on a portable butane camp stove. Washing the dishes was a major chore without water, but she performed all tasks with her usual grace and flair. Every meal was superb, and we never ran out of ice, beverages, coffee, or donuts. Late Friday afternoon, she even drove 40 miles to the town of Lake Placid and brought back a stack of pizzas for us. What a treat!
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Roland Culberson
Adventures in Venus
On arrival Thursday morning, I found John Clifton, Jim Kimball, George DeBarros and Fred already there. I was instructed as to where to put the Pace Hilton, and did so. After a little bit of time, I began the weekend of firsts.
1. This was the first road trip with the revised trailer, and that particular portion was a joy to deal with. All the time Dan and I took in there was WELL worth the effort. Very comfortable indeed.
2. This was the first trip with a portable canopy (porch) for daytime use. I don't know how I got along without it. I also found out about the multiplying chairs I always noticed under everyone else's canopies at past events. Put up a canopy, chairs will come!
3. First time out with the complete Losmandy G11. I had used the Meade field tripod with the head since getting the G11 in November. This time was the first use of the tripod itself. It isn't as portable as the field tripod, or the AP wood tripod that came along a couple of months ago off Astromart. (That is another story...)
4. The big first was the new design TMB 152 acquired a week ago. The AP 130 f/6 was traded in on this monster, as when I had bought it from Joe I told him I really wanted a 6" scope. Well, this is one superb 6" scope. I was ecstatic with the performance of this scope, especially when the seeing kicked in. Planets were like looking at perfect images in a book. Excellent shading on the orbs of Jupiter and Saturn. The rings of Saturn were gorgeous. Cassini popped perfectly clear and the Enke minima became apparent in some better moments. I even found (without the use of a Telrad) R Lepus; Very beautiful and VERY red. After a while I started sweeping in familiar areas looking for some fuzzies. I found several, though M51 was the trickiest, as it was in a clouded area and was tough to pull out. M104 was also located, as was the NGC planetary in Corvus.
That is a lot of firsts to me, and they all came off without a hitch.
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I had the 18" StarMaster out too, with the exception of Saturday night, the one night that it really would have been able to kick some "fuzzy butt". The seeing was in and out Thursday and Friday nights, but Saturday until midnight was great. I snuck in some reflector peeks Saturday from several other folks. Jim Mayes gave me some looks through my former 10" StarMaster (which I miss a little, especially when I look through it). It reminded me of why I liked it. I took a couple of peeks through the club's Juno over the course of the event. Dan had it tuned up and working well. I also got a few looks through the Schmidts of Jim Kimball and George DeBarros.
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Andrew seemed to enjoy being away from home, and had a good time as well. Though this was not a large event, it was a lot of fun. I got a look over Kye and Al's new house too. I can't tell you how much I like the way this place is set up. Talk about an "old Florida" design, it is the epitome. HUGE screened porch, constant breeze, fans, just unbelievable. I'm green with envy!
That is the other first. It was my first trip to the Star Farm, and after this, it will certainly NOT be the last. What a beautiful place. The sunset Friday night was spectacular! Saturday morning I saw a VERY large deer walking the property line to the west of the house. We saw Meadowlarks feeding that morning too. The trees there are almost like an aviary there were so many birds. It is so peaceful... Well, until we got there! Looking forward to the next trip!
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Jay Albert
Venus Revisited
After the Mid Florida Stargaze held at the Venus Recreation Center two years ago, I raved that it was the best deep sky observing experience of my life. Well, this year's Stargaze at Kye's Star Farm was even better! Due to the smaller size of the field, we had to have fewer people than we had back then, but the weather and the enthusiasm of those attending this year's Stargaze made up for the smaller size of the event. We had a diverse group of observers and instruments and the participants were glad to share the views in each other's telescopes and compare different eyepieces in the same instrument. Fred Lehman set up a portable shower near the mess tent (which he also brought) making up for one of the deficiencies of the Venus Recreation Center. The skies were so dark you could see the Horsehead with the naked eye…well, maybe not quite, but the transparency on all three nights was usually better than 6th magnitude. The observing field was well situated and well maintained and there was plenty of electricity for everyone who needed it.
Special thanks are due to those who contributed so much to making this year's Stargaze a success: Kye Ewing and her family for being such wonderful hosts, Fred Lehman, John Clifton, Al and Carl Ewing and George DeBarros for setting up and especially Willette Lehman and Maria Clifton for doing such a super job of feeding us. If not for them, we would now be skeletons with our bleached bones hunched over our optics.
Each night at the Stargaze was terrific. Using my Celestron NexStar 11 GPS, I observed dozens of open and globular star clusters, galaxies, planetary and emission nebulae, planets and even got to share views of some of George's carbon stars. There were several deep sky objects that I saw for the first time and other familiar objects that I've never seen better. I saw too many objects to list here, but here are some highlights:
- First time observations of Thor's Helmut emission nebula, NGC2359; rich open cluster NGC2354; m12.8 galaxy NGC3571 in Crater; open clusters NGC2541 and NGC2439; galaxy NGC5102 and globular cluster NGC5897. Best views I've had of the Whirlpool Galaxy M51; the Sombrero Galaxy, M104; the Centaurus A Galaxy, NGC5128; the Black Eye galaxy, M64; and the interacting Rat Tail or Antenna Galaxies, NGC4038 & NGC4039.
- Exploring the structure of the Eskimo Nebula at 400x with an OIII filter.
- Drilling into the Omega Centauri globular cluster at progressively higher powers revealing voids and star trains in the cluster's core.
- Cruising the Rosette Nebula with a focal reducer and OIII filter.
- Open clusters M46, M67 and M93.
- Seeing the mottled center, extended disk and stellar core of NGC2903 at 224x; hints of spiral structure in M61; high power view of Seyfert galaxy M94 and the flattest galaxy, NGC4762.
- Seeing more galaxies in one field of the Virgo cluster than I could identify.
- Seeing hints of cloud structure on Venus for the first time using 224x and a W23A red filter.
- Saturday night belonged to Jupiter with transits of Ganymede and Io and their shadows plus an occultation of Europa. Not only were the shadows visible, the moons themselves were, first as tiny bright disks against Jupiter's limb, then as faint gray dots preceding their shadows.
These three days and nights were a joy. Once again, the Stargaze gave me the best deep sky observing experience of my life. Sign me up for next year!
The Food Tent
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Jim Mayes, John Clifton, and George DeBarros from afar
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Jim Mayes, John Clifton, and George DeBarros up close
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Looking Northwest
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Looking South
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Sunrise
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The Forest
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Fog
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More Fog
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Friday Morning
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Angel's Spot
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Looking Southeast
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Willi in the Tent
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Distant Orange Grove
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Evening Chow Line
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Looking South
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More Looking South
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Still More Looking South
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Scopehenge on the Equinox
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More Scopehenge
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Still More Scopehenge
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Bill and Dan
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Looking South
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Anthony Borchers
Because we're working stiffs, Jeff and Laura Woods and I couldn't arrange to be on site for the first night, and headed up to Venus around midday Friday with the clear sky clock predicting at least one good night ahead of us. When we arrived, George showed us to our lot and we quickly set up our camps and gear to prepare for our first Messier Marathon.
Right off the bat, we missed any opportunity to see the full catalog, with trees on the Western horizon and twilight to blame for our missing M74 and M110. After that, we settled into a good pace, though, and worked our way steadily East, Jeff and Laura with the 12" LX200 and myself with the Nexstar 114GT. With the 4.5" scope and less than perfect alignment, I had a more challenging time of it, but managed to keep pretty much an even pace until we got into the galaxy clusters around Leo. With numerous objects within an eyepiece field or less of each other, it became very difficult to tell which of the objects was the correct target. Frequently, I would consult the superior alignment and aperture of the LX200 to confirm the view in my small scope before checking off another faint fuzzy.
Sometime in this process, we were introduced to Kye, who detoured us in her Coulter 10" (man, I love those Oddysees!) to Omega Centauri. All I can say is "Wow!" Coming from points further North, I had never seen this nearby globular before, and even with its low altitude, it is without a doubt the most stunning view of such a cluster I have ever had. Even M13 pales by comparison.
We wrapped up the Coma-Virgo cluster and decided to take the mid-marathon nap option. Most of the other observers were just turning in around 4 AM when we roused to continue through the "summer" Milky Way. From this point, the Woods' and I shared the LX200's eyepiece while my 4.5" sat mostly idle through the final list of galactic nebulae, open clusters and globulars. As twilight began to rise, it became obvious that trees in the east would keep us from viewing the last half-dozen objects on our list before they were lost in the glare, so we turned in just at dawn with 102 of 110 objects viewed. Some purists may decry our GOTO marathon, but 102 Messier objects in one night is a pretty fine use of the darkness by my standards!
Saturday night, after some initial evening haze, the skies turned out to be much better than the weather reports had led us to expect. The marathon behind us, we took a more leisurely approach, viewing miscellaneous favorites, wandering around to chat and look through other people's scopes (particularly at the amazing show going on at Jupiter!) and, in my case, experimenting with long exposure film photography of the campsite and star trails. Some of the results are provided below. At one point during the night, Roland Culberson gave me a hand with a quick star collimation of my scope, after which it performed better than it had since I took it out of the box. Many thanks again, Roland!
Because I had a long trip back and lots to do when I arrived home on Sunday, I made a fairly early night of it, but only after having a look at Omega Centauri through Ron's 18" Starmaster (sorry, Ron, I don't think anyone ever told me your last name!), a wondrous finish to a fantastic weekend of observing!
The following photos were taken with my fresh-out-of-mothballs old Nikormat with 50mm lens and 100 ISO Fujichrome (note the green tint) @ f/2.8:
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2 hour exposure from the South end of the field, with
Roland Culberson's canopy and 6" refractor and John Clifton's canopy/lab
in the foreground. Fred Lehman's portable observatory & trailer and the
Woods' 12" LX200 can be seen in the background. A couple of near earth
interlopers are evident to the Western side of the circumpolar star
trails. The vignetting at upper left is caused by a misalignment of my
improvised dew shield. |
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1½ hour exposure from the Northeast end of the field featuring my Nexstar 114GT and ghostly image at the toolbox in the foreground, the Woods' LX200 to the left, Kye's scope hutch and a pair of unidentified SCTs in the center of the field, and numerous trailers and autos in the background. An unidentified star (probably Sirius, judging by the brightness) arcs across the sky |
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Snapshot of the all-important chow line for Saturday's feast. Much
gratitude to the tireless efforts of Willette Lehman and Maria
Clifton! |
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