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Saturday Night Viewing at Area 51 in Big Cypress National Preserve
January 16, 2004
Jeffrey Kramer
I was at Area 51 tonight with my Meade 8" LX200GPS. I observed for about
6½ hours, from 6:30PM to about 1:00AM. The night was clear and the
transparency was average. There were some high clouds to the south but
they stayed to the south and eventually dissipated. Also, the seeing was
excellent, around an 8. It was cool, in the mid 40s by the end of the
night, but not near as cold as when it was in the lower 30s last month.
Fred was there with his Meade 14" LX200GPS, Ron with his 18" Starmaster,
Kegan with his Meade 8" LX200GPS, Jay with his Nexstar 11GPS, Art with
his 8" Dob, and James with his 10" Dob. Fred, Kegan, and Jay were imaging.
There were 7 of us out tonight and that is a very good turnout for a
Friday night.
I started off with Venus which was at a pretty ¾ full phase. I
observed Venus until it was dark enough to start viewing other objects.
I took a quick peek at Mars but didn't really study it. There were too
many other objects to view!! One of the first objects viewed was Comet
2002-T7 Linear, now at 8th magnitude. It looked like a small fuzzy patch
with a faint tail heading towards the east. This comet should be
spectacular in a few months.
After the Comet, I spent some time viewing the Double Cluster which
truly looks amazing in my 41mm Panoptic at 49x with a 1.3 degree FOV.
After that, I observed M31, M32, and M110 and was able to get all three
of them in the same FOV of my 41mm Panoptic. That is a very nice site. I
then observed M33, the galaxy in Triangulum which was quite large. I could
not see any detail in the galaxy though. I then went to M42 and it was
absolutely spectacular in both my 41mm Panoptic at 49x and my 20mm Nagler
at 100x. I could see the 6-stars in the Trapezium as well as structure in
the nebula. The FOV of both eyepieces was filled with wisps of nebulosity
fro both M42 and M43. It truly looked amazing. I took a look at M1 (Crab
Nebula) and enjoyed a view of an object that I cannot see at home.
I then used the Autostar II's ability to locate objects by Constellation
and started with Auriga. In Auriga, I saw M36, M37, M38, and NGC1907
which is a small Open Cluster [OC] right near M38. I also viewed
NGC1664 [OC], C31 [Diffuse Nebula], and NGC1857 [OC]. In Cassiopea,
I viewed C13 [OC that looks like a Dragonfly], NGC225 [OC], and C18
one of the Andromeda's local group of galaxies; but I could not see
C17 [the galaxy near C18 which is also in the local group]. I also
viewed C8 [OC], NGC654 [OC], NGC659 [OC], C10 [OC], M52, NGC7789 [OC],
and M103 [OC]. In Taurus, I viewed M45, NGC1647 [OC], M1 [Crab Nebula],
and NGC1817 [OC]. In Puppis, I viewed M46 and NGC2438 [a planetary
nebula near the edge of M46], M47, NGC2439 [OC], M93 [OC], and C71 [OC].
In Leo, I was able to frame the galaxies M65, M66, and NGC3628 in the FOV
of my 41mm Panoptic. Lastly, I viewed the following other objects: C39
[Eskimo Nebula] and saw its bluish color, M44 [Beehive Cluster], M34,
M51 [low in the sky, I could see its companion galaxy but that was it],
M81, M82, M97 [Owl Nebula], as well as NGC2976, a galaxy.
I had my best view of Saturn ever tonight, through Ron's 18" Starmaster.
I believe I saw Encke's division for the first time through it. Saturn
looked nice through my scope but I could not see Enke's Division but did
see Cassini around the entire planet. To close the night, I took a short
look Jupiter which was about halfway up in the sky. It showed about 4
bands with some nice detail in the North and South Equatorial Belts as
well as a nice size oval near the NEB.
All in all, tonight was a great night under a dark sky! Talk to you
soon.
Fred Lehman
My Friday nights have been somewhat empty since the South Florida Science
Museum closed its doors, so I was pleased when I received both phone calls
and e-mails from fellow stargazers asking me to attend an impromptu viewing
session in the Everglades. The turnout was quite good for and unscheduled
event, with seven cars, seven scopes and seven amateur astronomers in
attendance. The many dozens of astrophotos that I have been showing around
has had its effect on the other guys, because this time there were three of
us busily devoting the entire evening to imaging!
The skies were completely clear and the upper atmosphere was very stable.
At ground level, the humidity was quite low with no dew or fog and there
was no wind at all. Except for right at sunset, there were no mosquitoes
either. In short, a perfect night for astronomy.
My primary target for the evening was the soon to be brilliant
comet T7-Linear. It was still four months from its close encounter with
Earth and as of yet only at the 8th magnitude, but I wanted to capture the
first of what hopefully will be a sequence of images of this object as it
passes through our inner solar system.
My several attempts to download a cometary database into the Skychart
program on my laptop earlier in the day had proven to be unsuccessful, so
I was forced to revert to the old fashioned method of actually finding
the comet in the sky. In what is normally considered to be an unnatural
act for me, I actually brought along a note listing the expected RA and
Dec that I had extracted from the NASA web site. Since the scope was on
the wedge and pointing North, it was a relatively simple operation to slew
the scope till the coordinates matched the ones I had for the comet. When
I looked through the eyepiece, there it was! It had a dense and well
defined head with a long flowing tail. Everyone else came over to view
it, but then (of course) they each wanted to view the comet through their
own scopes. I first passed out the comet's coordinates to my colleagues
with electronically controlled scopes. After they had each targeted the
object, I flashed my laser into the sky so those with DOBs could follow
its bright green beam to the prize. The entire group was more than
pleased with the sight, and if the evening had ended right then and
there, I think everyone would have gone home happy.
As the evening wore on, conditions only continued to improve, and they
were pretty good to start with. The viewing of the comet had set the
mood for the entire evening, and it seemed that the weather was in at
least as good a mood as the rest of us. I removed the eyepieces from
my scope and replaced them with a load of photographic equipment. After
capturing a twenty minute sequence of the comet, I went on to image a
multitude of additional bright objects. The final shot of the night was
the nice group of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster that surround M86. I
adjusted the brightness and contrast during processing to mimic the
actual view presented through the eyepiece of a 10" telescope at a good
dark site.
The last of us packed up our equipment shortly after moonrise at
3:15 AM, and by 4 AM, the place was empty once again (except for the
alligators).
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- Object: Comet 2002 T7 Linear
- Coordinates: 0h 40m, +20° 48'
- Time: 8:44 pm ~ 9:05 pm
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 20 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: The Running Man Nebula NGC1975
- Constellation: Orion the Hunter
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 1.44 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 20 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: Bode's Galaxy NGC3031 (M81)
- Constellation: Ursa Major, the Great Bear
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 20 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: Rosette Nebula NGC2237
- Constellation: Monoceros
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 20 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: Great Orion Nebula NGC1976 (M42)
- Constellation: Orion the Hunter
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 19 x 1 minute, unguided
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- Object: Open Clusters NGC2168 (M35) and NGC2158
- Constellation: Gemini, the Twin Brothers
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 12 x 30 seconds, unguided
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- Object: Double Cluster NGC869 and NGC884
- Constellation: Perseus, the Rescuer of Andromeda
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 30 x 10 seconds, unguided
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- Object: Virgo Cluster featuring giant ellipticals M86 and M84
- Constellation: Virgo the Virgin
- Telescope: 14" LX200GPS with piggybacked 5" NexStar @ f/3.3
- Camera: Starlight Xpress MX7C
- Resolution: 780x580 @ 4.1 arcseconds per pixel
- Exposure: 12 x 2 minutes, unguided
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