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Saturday Night Viewing at Area 51 in Big Cypress National Preserve
December 20, 2003
Jay Albert
Wow, what a night! The weather was cold, but beautifully clear and the
wind completely died by sunset. There were no bugs at all and my son Mike
(visiting from California) and I saw only one alligator sluggishly
floating along the opposite bank of the canal. Our leader, Fred Lehman,
was there with his Meade 14" LX 200, Jim Mayes brought his remarkable
port-o-dobby (which provided some beautiful views) and we were joined by
Tony (sorry, I don't recall your last name), a new ASPB member from (if
I recall correctly) Boca Raton. I had my Celestron NexStar 11 GPS. Ron
D'Oria was already at area 51 and had his 18" Starmaster GOTO set up when
we arrived. All told, we had 16 people in attendance with 12 telescopes
of all types and sizes plus 2 binoculars.
The seeing was a bit rough at the start of the evening. Venus was little
more than a vibrating gibbous blur at 6pm. By 6:30, however, seeing was
good enough (5/10 on the ALPO scale) for a Mars observation. At a
diminutive 9 arcseconds, Mars was too small at 224x for a satisfying
view while the seeing was too rough for 400x. At 311x assisted by a
W23A red filter, Syrtis Major was obvious toward the east limb with
the bright Hellas depression to its south and Sabaeus Sinus to its
west with Meridiani Sinus west of Sabaeus. The south polar cap was
minuscule but visible with a dark area (Mare Australe) on its north
and west. The prominent dust storm on the other side of the planet
was not evident in this view.
Deep sky viewing was fabulous! We started with the Blue Snowball
planetary nebula, then the core of M31, then caught the Helix Nebula
(a large, low surface brightness planetary nebula) very low before it
set. The Helix, faint and diffuse at 88x, jumped in brightness and
detail with the aid of an OIII filter. I had the best view I've ever
had of the edge-on galaxy NGC891 in a very rich Andromeda star field.
This galaxy was invisible from my backyard in Boca, but was easy and its
dust lane obvious at 88x. We had an even better view using an 18mm Meade
Super Wide Field (156x). M1 showed structural detail and was somewhat
improved by the OIII filter. We saw the Saturn Nebula (another planetary)
between tree branches just above the western horizon, and then turned
higher in the sky to the Little Dumbbell, a planetary nebula that is a
miniature of its namesake, M27. The nebula showed detail within its two
lobes at 224x with the OIII filter. Other objects we viewed through the
NexStar 11 included the barred spiral galaxy NGC1300 far south in
Eridanus, M42 showed 6 stars in the Trapezium (seeing had improved to
7/10), the very rich and beautiful open cluster M37 and M35 which
overflowed the 88x field. At the edge of M35, the background open
cluster NGC2058 was resolved into an abundance of tiny, faint and
tightly packed stars. We closed with a beautiful view of Saturn;
still relatively low in altitude just after 10:30, at 224x and
311x.
We would have stayed later if we had thought to wear thermal underwear
and if my son had warmer socks and shoes instead sneakers. But we're
not from Minnesota (like Fred) and we did get cold. After packing up
our gear, we watched Fred image the Horsehead Nebula (which I failed
to see through the eyepiece). The image on Fred's red-shielded computer
screen was detailed and dramatic. We hope the exposure was successful.
We left just after 11pm and passed two cars that were just arriving.
It was as good a night as we could have wished for.
Fred Lehman
The skies were perfectly clear and reasonably stable and the turnout was
more than adequate, with a total attendance of twenty people and 16
optical instruments, including 2 pair of binoculars on tripods. Not all
twenty people were present at once, since some of the early-birds departed
before the final group arrived.
The seeing started out a bit tough, but it improved continuously
throughout the evening until shortly before midnight when the temperature
dropped precipitously to well below freezing and a chilling north wind
developed. The small amount of dew on things quickly turned into a whole
lot of ice. By 4 AM, the entire sky was churning with thermal eddies, so
most of us packed up our equipment and headed for home. Two hearty soles
doing wide-field photography were seemingly unaffected by such hardships
and remained on site till sunrise.
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- Object: NGC7331 with NGC7335, NGC7336, NGC7337, and NGC7340 along side
- Constellation: Pegasus the Winged Horse
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7c
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 10 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: NGC1232
- Constellation: Eridanus the River
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7c
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 4 x 4 minutes
- Autoguider: SBIG STV on piggyback 5" SCT @ f/5.95
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- Object: NGC891
- Constellation: Andromeda the Princess
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7c
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 7 x 4 minutes
- Autoguider: SBIG STV on piggyback 5" SCT @ f/5.95
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- Object: Horse Head Nebula IC434
- Constellation: Orion the Hunter
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7c
- Resolution: 580x780 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 9 x 4 minutes
- Autoguider: SBIG STV on piggyback 5" SCT @ f/5.95
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- Object: Flame Nebula NGC2024
- Constellation: Orion the Hunter
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7c
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 9 x 4 minutes
- Autoguider: SBIG STV on piggyback 5" SCT @ f/5.95
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- Object: UFO (Unimaginably Frosty Object)
- Time: 4:15 AM
- Temperature: 28° Fahrenheit
- Photographer: Don Ellington
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