ASV Messier Night

This weekend we went to the annual Messier Night held by the Astronomical Society of Victoria, at their dark site a bit out of Melbourne. We arrived mid-afternoon; staked out a spot, and set up our enormous (brand new) tent in the camping area. We set up the PST in the observation field; there was another solar scope somewhere else, which I didn't have a look through. We had a number of people come past to have a look, and they were pretty impressed, which was of course gratifying. The sun was looking awesome: one sunspot by itself, and a 'little' clump of solar spots in the other hemisphere. There were some cool prominences going on too, one in particular that was quite feathery. I didn't actually get much of a look, but that's ok. Hopefully the clouds will stay away in Melbourne a bit more, so I can get it out here.

We set up Copernicus and Keppler before having some food; both got some comments from other astronomers out setting up. People were mostly curious about why our lovely 128mm Tak was in the observational field rather than the photographic.

The night itself was well organised. The site is great - a bunkhouse and toilets, and they had a Lions Club out there with food and drinks - and they had a number of people giving short talks about different aspects of astronomy, as well as someone later in the night giving a talk about what was visible. I hadn't expected that there would be so many people for whom this was a completely new experience; the ASV must have advertised the night outside of the Society itself. It was a good idea, I think: I heard someone very excited about being able to borrow one of the ASV's scopes when they got home. As a consequence of this, though, there were a lot of people wanting to have a look through the various telescopes that were set up. Happily, I had no plan for the night other than find Saturn, and use the Argo to go a tour of the Messier objects.

Early on I had a look at the Pleiades - which just never looks good through a scope - and the Hyades, which I like; it forms quite a distinct triangle. I tried to split Procyon on discovering that it was a double (I was trying to figure out the stars on Canis Minor), but the atmosphere was pretty turbulent, and I have no idea what the mags of the stars are. It finally got dark enough that M42 looked awesome, which was of course a delight.

I had a look at a few Messiers - so many of the open clusters are just dull, and I didn't spend much time on them. Saw M78, that lovely little nebula in Orion, with two associated stars. Then Saturn was high enough above the trees to make it worth having a look - at least if it's something new - and I think, over the night, maybe 40 or 50 people had a look at it. There were some people who had never ever looked at a planet through a scope, and they were seriously impressed. It was a lot of fun, actually; I really enjoy helping people appreciate the night sky. Over the rest of the night I also showed some people Omega Centauri and 47Tuc, impressive of course, and then I finished with M42 - of course - and showed a few people that, too, which they all enjoyed.

It didn't get as cold as I had feared, so the freezer suits never made an appearance (happily!). I made it to 1am comfortably, but from there I started to fade, so packed Keppler away and just had a look through Copernicus. Early on I had looked at the Tarantula Nebula through J's new 20mm Nagler, and it looked spectacular; so did 47Tuc, and an amazing planetary nebula with a hole in the middle. Later in the night it was dark enough to see the Horsehead Nebula, and I think this time that I really did see it, which is thrilling. The Flame Nebula was more interesting, though. Also, the Sombrero Galaxy: seriously, seriously cool. The dust lane was clearly visible... it may be one of the most interesting galaxies I've seen, actually. Just before bed we had a look at the Spindle Galaxy - which I didn't look at long enough to see the elongated ends - and the Ghost of Jupiter, which was just mush. Finished on Omega Centuari, which was an adequate substitute for Orion. I guess.

In the tent by around 2am.

The Little Desert, Night One

While it's not exactly a desert, when I say we came here because it's a dark part of Victoria, it is seriously a dark part of Victoria.

My main aim on this first night was to play with my new Argo - a Christmas present - and get used to my Losmandy mount. While I grew to love my industrial green Tak P2Z, it is awfully nice not to have to remember to disengage the tracking and then re-engage.... Anyway, I aligned it pretty easily, and then had a look at Jupiter (of course). Since it's so easy with the Argo I also found Uranus - and even though it wasn't very dark, it was an obviously blue little disk.

I decided to start off by having a go at one of their tour functions, and chose Non-Stellar Objects within 30 degrees of Sirius and a lower limit of mag 8 - since I'll admit that it wasn't exactly pitch-black yet, but I was impatient. First off was M41, a bright open cluster, which looked great. The next few objects were also open clusters, and although they can be interesting enough the joy soon waned: I looked at NGC2345, M50, M47, and M46, skipped a number of NGC clusters, and then gave up and moved on to trying to find triple stars, again using the tour function. This too I fairly quickly gave up on; for my part, it was probably not quite dark enough to be trying to split triples, but it was frustrating in general because the Argo didn't supply mags for all of the stars, nor their separations, so I wasn't sure if I found them or not. And thus I moved on to the 'Bright Nebulae' tour.

First, the Rosette Nebula, around NGC2244. In Ptolemy (90mm refractor), the nebulosity was very faint indeed. However, I badgered J into finding it in Copernicus (16" Dob), complete with brand new filters, and WOW! It looked awesome - we couldn't fit the whole thing into the field of view in the 21mm. It was matched, and bettered in my scope, by M42 and 43, of course - I really do love this time of year - they just looked incredible. Every time I look at the nebula there it just looks brilliant.

I was interrupted at this point in my tour my J's excitement at having found the Horsehead Nebula. He got a H-beta filter specifically for finding this, and was over the moon at spotting it. I'm not as patient as him, so while I could see the band of nebulosity and just pick the 'divot' that marks the famous horse's head, I couldn't make out any detail. The Flame Nebula, however, was waaay more interesting, looking quite a lot like a maple leaf. He also showed me M1, the Crab Nebula - a large, faint, not very crabby smudge - and, a bit later, several faint galaxies around Fornax, including the awesome 'Zorro', NGC1365.

I looked at a few more bright nebulae - NGC2175, M78, NGC1975 (drowned out by M42), and a couple of others that I couldn't really pick - before going back to my old fave, double stars. As with the list of triple stars, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information provided in the Argo about magnitudes and separation distances for the double stars. I ended up grabbing my Cambridge Double Star Atlas, and looking them up in it to see if it was worth my energy - but some of the ones listed on the Argo weren't listed in the Atlas... I know there are double star catalogues available to download, so I will to investigate those. Anyway, I saw E816 (a separation of 4.4"!! Very proud); Ori60; E838; E877; OE73; Ori68; and E766 (I really should figure out how to do Greek letters, since the E is meant to be sigma...). In doing so I also stumbled on an awesome little planetary, NGC2438, and a totally lovely open cluster, NGC2169.

To finish up the night I tried the non-stellar objects tour again, this time in the incredibly rich area around Carina. I skipped most of the open clusters, but looked at Omega Centauri (always breathtaking, and stupidly detailed); NGC2808 (another globular, this one quite faint); the Gem Cluster and Jewel Box (open clusters I will make an exception for); Centaurus A (a faint galaxy with what appears to be a split in the middle); and the seriously cool Ghost of Jupiter (another planetary nebula - I love it).

We packed it in around 2.15, with the moon rising: a crescent, it was so yellow it looked like a banana. If we'd hung around a bit longer we could have looked at Saturn, but my goodness it got cold. From complaining about the heat in the day, we ended up as rugged up as we've ever been while observing. Can't wait for tonight.