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Weekend Viewing at Area 51 in Big Cypress National Preserve
April 15~17, 2004
Bill Williams
The following is an excerpt from an e-mail letter to the club president:
Hi Fred. Good to hear from you. Likewise, I enjoyed observing and shooting with you! We make quite a crazy pair!
I have attached a few images of you from both last Thursday and Saturday nights. One image shows Bill Janda and Mary Lou with his 18-inch Dob. Another shows Ron painted red while he was observing IC4406 in Lupus. One of the red images has 3 of the stars in Crux circled. The circumpolar shots were taken with my Pentax 6X7 camera on Ektachrome film. Check out that red tent! Must hit the hay -- got to get up real early. Keep in touch...
Bill Janda and Mary Lou
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Me with my 13.1" DOB
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Fred catching an image
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Fred by my scope from the top of the burm
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Fred catching an image
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Fred catching an image
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Ron D'Oria on his knees to catch an obscure cluster along the southern horizon
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Three Stars of the Southern Cross
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Scorpius
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Southerly Exposure
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Southerly Exposure showing the Milky Way
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Northerly exposure
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Sagittarius and the Milky Way
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Tony Borchers
The following is an excerpt from an e-mail letter to the club president:
Hi Fred. Thought you might like to see these images (the only two that were useful from my first experiments with the barn-door tracker) from the mini star party weekend.
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Canis Major region.
2 minute hand-cranked barn-door tracker exposure on Kodak Elite Chrome 200, 50mm lens @ f/2. Faintest stars visible are around 8th magnitude. M41 is evident just North of the 6th magnitude blue giant 12 Canis Majoris. The predominant yellow-red color of the image comes from the cluster's being dominated by a K3 giant of magnitude 6.9. |
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Saturn at the feet of Castor.
2 minute hand-cranked barn-door tracker exposure on Kodak Elite Chrome 200, 50mm lens @ f/2. The tips of the horns of Taurus (zeta and beta) are visible lower left. Omega, beta and alpha Aurigae are prominent in the lower right quadrant. I had hoped to catch M35, M36, M37 and M38 in this field, but none are clearly resolved. |
Jeffrey Kramer
I was at Area 51 Friday night with my Meade 8” LX200GPS. I observed for about 5½ hours (from 8:15PM to 1:45AM). The night was clear and the transparency was good. There was not a cloud in the sky all night. Also, the seeing was a bit better than average, about a 6. It was mild with the temperatures in the low 60s. Attendees included Fred with his 14” LX200GPS, Mike with his Nexstar 11GPS, and a new person, Todd, who just purchased a Meade 5” goto Newtonian.
As the sky was starting to get dark, I viewed Venus and it’s crescent phase. After Venus, I took a quick peek at Jupiter and Saturn. I could see some detail in the bands of Jupiter but did not spend much time studying it. Tonight, I wanted to concentrate on some of the Messier Objects and I viewed quite a few of them.
I started off with M41, and then moved to M35 (and NGC2158), M36, M37, and M38 (and NGC1907 a - planetary nebula near the edge of M38). I could see all 6-stars in the Trapezium of M42 although the 6th star was not that easy. I viewed the following Messier Objects tonight: M1, M3, M4, M5, M13, M42, M43, M44, M45, M46 (NGC2438), M47, M48, M50, M51, M57, M64, M65, M66 (and NGC3628), M67, M68, M79, M80, M81, M82, M92, M93, M95, M96, M97, M103, M104, and M105. I was able to see M65, M66, and NGC3628 in the same FOV of my 41MM Panoptic eyepiece. Also, I could see M95 and M96 in the same FOV. M105 could also be seen in the same FOV as M96. I could see the dust lane in M104 with averted vision and M51 looked very nice with hints of the spiral arms visible. I viewed C53, the Spindle Galaxy, and it looked very nice.
I spent quite a bit of time on Caldwell 80 (Omega Centauri) and it looked spectacular at 100x in my 20MM Nagler. It was resolved right across the center and it was huge!! Also, in Centaurus, I viewed C77, the Centaurus A galaxy. I was able to see two stars in the constellation Crux (Southern Cross) with my Naked eye with a third seen with averted vision. Also in Crux, I was able to view C94, the Jewel Box, but it was mostly washed out due to its very low altitude in the southern sky. Lastly, I was able to see Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than our Sun, with my scope but I could not see it with my naked eye as my glasses broke tonight. Luckily, I keep a spare pair in my car and was able to drive home safely.
All in all, tonight was a spectacular night under a dark sky and I viewed 37 Messier Objects, several Caldwell Objects, and the closest star to Earth other than the Sun.
Fred Lehman
I attended all three nights of our little mini-starparty, and I must say that it was a great event in spite of the complete lack of planning or scheduling. The main reason for this is, of course, the great weather. I had my scope set up for imaging all three nights, and I bagged a total of 23 objects with my camera.
A powerful cold front passed during the early morning hours on Wednesday, and by Thursday night, the wind had subsided and we were submersed in a large dry air mass. I arrived on the scene just after sunset to find two scopes already set up for viewing. I hastily assembled my tripod, wedge, and scope during the fading twilight and was ready for polar alignment just as Polaris was becoming visible in the night sky.
I carefully computed the angle and position of the pole with respect to Polaris, and I was quickly able to position my scope directly on the target. Since I had been planning to image at f/10, I decided to check my alignment with a drift test. To my great dismay, any chosen star would drift significantly within the timespan of just a couple of minutes. I was certain that I had done a good polar alignment, so I immediately assumed that the software in the telescope was in a confused state. I shut down the scope, waited for a few seconds, then reapplied power and went through a simple alignment procedure. Unfortunately, a second drift test produced identical results to the first one. This was very confusing to me, so once again I shut down the scope and re-aligned the polar axis to True North. When power was restored to the scope, the drift error persisted.
By now, I was really getting my feathers ruffled, so I called the other two fellows over and asked them for assistance. Since they were both old DOBers, surely their knowledge of the sky could solve my problem. Unfortunately, fork-mounts were well outside of their area of expertise, and I still could not resolve my dilemma. This rather infuriating situation continued till almost 11PM, when eventually the rotation of Polaris around the celestial pole finally shocked me into the realization that I had been aligning on the wrong side of the star, exactly twelve hours off the desired target. I quickly repositioned the scope, completed a successful drift test, and settled back in my viewing chair to cool my frazzled corpuscles. I have never made that rather stupid mistake in all my many years of astronomy. I wondered aloud if I was beginning to loose my mind. I'd be willing to bet the other two astronomers were certain I already had.
Friday night I arrived just before sunset, only to find that once again there were two others already set up for viewing. Things went much better for me than the previous night, and I imaged eight objects by the time the morning twilight brought a end to my nighttime endeavour. One set of images was unprocessable for reasons that still elude me. The other seven pictures are shown below.
Saturday night was the best of all, not because the weather was good (it wasn't) but instead because of the large turnout of people and the variety of telescopes. In an attempt to be a bit more sociable in the larger crowd, I set up my scope for wide field imaging so everyone could come by and check out what was going on from time to time. By the time dawn came around, I had collected twelve sets of images, only one of which was not worth processing into a picture.
The weather was more or less great the entire weekend, with clear skies, dry and still air, and very few mosquitoes. We suffered a spat of thin but obscuring clouds on Saturday night alone, and it caused several people to become frustrated and many of them prematurely packed up and headed for home. Almost exactly on que with each vehicle's departure, the clouds would vanished for about 15 minutes. Finally, at 2 AM when Ron D'Oria disassembled his 18" Starmaster, the clouds completely went away and did not return the rest of the night.
| Thursday Night Photos [14" LX200GPS @ f/10] |
M82 in Ursa Major
Cigar Galaxy
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M104 in Virgo
Sombrero Galaxy
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M57 in Lyra
Ring Nebula
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| Friday Night Photos [14" LX200GPS @ f/10] |
NGC3242 in Hydra
Ghost of Jupiter
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NGC2392 in Gemini
Eskimo Nebula
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NGC6826 in Cygnus
Blinking Nebula
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NGC6543 in Draco
Cat's Eye Nebula
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M95 in Virgo
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M64 in Virgo
Black Eye Galaxy
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M16 in Serpens
Eagle Nebula
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| Saturday Night Photos [5" NexStar @ f/3.3] |
M59 & M60 in Virgo
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M65, M66, & NGC3628 in Leo
The Leo Triplet
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M81 & M82 in Ursa Major
Bode's Galaxies
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M107 in Ophiuchus
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NGC6888 in Cygnus
Crescent Nebula
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M8 in Sagittarius
Lagoon Nebula
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M20 in Sagittarius
Trifid Nebula
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M16 in Serpens
Eagle Nebula
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M17 in Sagittarius
Swan Nebula
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NGC6520 & B86 in Sagittarius
Ink Splotch Nebula
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IC5067 in Cygnus
Pelican Nebula
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