| |
|
Mid Florida Star Gaze 2007
Optimism Triumphs
Jay Albert - March 20, 2007
I had misgivings when I left for the Mid Florida Stargaze this year. The forecasts were for poor conditions and even rain Thursday and Friday nights with Saturday night holding the only hope for decent viewing. But you never know how things will actually turn out and the weatherman has been known to miss the mark more than once. So I went to Venus.
It was partly cloudy when I got to George and Mimi DeBarros’ Milky Way Ranch Thursday afternoon. The clouds increased as the evening wore on and we even had a brief drizzle or two around dinner time. Fred Lehman had already set up his Meade 14” SCT in his portable observing dome, but no one else wanted to risk setting up in the open field under the cloudy and breezy sky. By around 8pm, however, parts of the sky began to open up here and there, the wind grew calm and the temperature was balmy. The ephemeral “sucker holes” didn’t warrant setting up telescopes, but Ben Kolstad brought out his 60mm spotting scope and a few of us grabbed our binoculars. As a hole opened up, we’d check out the binocular objects available there and when the hole closed, we’d move on to the next opening. Many of us had forgotten how enjoyable binocular astronomy could be. While listening to music, chatting and joking, we observed such large scale objects as the Pleiades, Hyades, Beehive, Double Cluster and Alpha Perseii Association, M41, M47, the Auriga clusters M36, 37 & 38, stars were resolved in M35, M81 & 82 were in the same field and, of course, the Great Nebula in Orion. Even after clouds completely covered the sky around 10pm, we continued to hang out until about midnight.
We had beautiful weather Friday morning and Kye Ewing led some of us on a tour and hike in the Archbold Biological Research Station. We hiked through the scrub country and saw lots of birds, including downy and red bellied woodpeckers, hawks, doves and the rare and subtly colored scrub jay. The rains and high winds came later that afternoon. At one point we had a heavy thunder storm which almost blew over Ben and Marcella’s tent. It looked like Friday night would be a loser.
But it wasn’t. The sky began to clear before sunset and both the wind and temperature dropped. While the seeing was rather rough, the transparency became quite good. I put an f/6.3 focal reducer on my Celestron NexStar 11” SCT and enjoyed (relatively) wide field views of such objects as the Rosette Nebula (which really stood out with an OIII filter), Orion Nebula, NGC 2024 (the Flame Nebula) and the Christmas Tree Nebula with the Cone Nebula right below it. Removing the focal reducer, I switched back to f/10 and enjoyed high powered views of the Ghost of Jupiter and NGC 2438 planetary nebulae with the OIII filter. I sketched the latter in the rich star field of the northern part of the beautiful open cluster M46. After observing some other open clusters in that part of the sky, I checked out Saturn with my binoviewer. Since the rough seeing gave mediocre views, I removed the binoviewer and started on galaxies in the southern sky. I was about to start sketching NGC 3166 & 3169, an interesting pair in the same 18mm eyepiece field, when we felt a sudden up tick in the wind and drop in temperature. Looking north, we saw a blanket of thick black clouds approaching rapidly and quickly started covering our gear. I put my scope in hibernation mode (preserving my alignment), covered up and put my electronics in the car. It was close to 1am by this time, so I decided to go to bed. The next morning Fred told me that the sky cleared shortly after I hit the sleeping bag and remained clear for the rest of the night with only one very brief interruption. Fred got some beautiful images during that time, despite having to fix his wedge, which had collapsed on his hand earlier in the evening. Luckily, while extremely painful and swollen, Fred’s hand did not seem to be seriously injured.
Saturday was spectacular with a brilliant blue sky and crisp air. Ben, Marcella and I went for a bird watching walk right after dawn. Swallowtail kites, red shouldered hawks, doves and other birds were out. I saw my first meadow lark. Saturday night was cold, but clear all night and the observing field had filled with new arrivals. After a viewing Venus during twilight, I moved on to deep sky objects as the sky darkened. I decided to concentrate on the southern sky, starting with M79, the globular cluster in Lepus and NGC 1964, a galaxy in the same constellation. I observed some open clusters, including the very beautiful NGC 2539 in Canis Major and the red stars R Leporis, W Orionis and V Hydrae, then began observing galaxies. I sketched NGC 2613 in Pyxis at 224x, and then observed all the galaxies the Cambridge Star Atlas showed in the constellation Crater. I sketched the “Spindle Galaxy”, NGC 3115 and NGC 3166 & 3169 which I had missed drawing the night before. I then moved to Centaurus to observe the “Hamburger”, a.k.a. NGC 5128 or Centaurus A and closed with the magnificent Omega Centauri globular cluster. After stowing my gear to assure a necessarily speedy departure Sunday morning (I had a family obligation back home), I wondered around the observing field and saw a fabulous view of M51’s spiral arms in Ron D’Auria’s 18” Starmaster. By the time I went to bed at 3am, only Fred and Michelle were still observing.
I awoke a little after 6am Sunday morning to find a sky filled with stars and a bright Milky Way arching across the meridian. A fitting end to a wonderful weekend. My thanks to George and Mimi for their hospitality, to John Clifton for his efforts in organizing and making sure everyone had adequate space for equipment and camping and to Fred and Willi for doing such a good job of keeping us fed.
|
|
|
