Last night of astroholiday

The wind did not let up for our last night of our astroholiday, but we went out anyway. J had earlier set up the PST for a bit of solar viewing - and in order to do that, put the double plate on the Losmandy mount. Since it was on there anyway, we decided to try the double up: the 128 and the 90mm. Put the 10mm eyepiece in the 128 and 21mm in the other, with the idea that this would give quite a different view of various objects. It was good in theory, I think, and certainly did give different views. However, it was quite heavy, and seemed to have a bit of trouble moving via the hand controls; this was probably partly to do with the wind, but may als mean we didn't have it quite balanced right.

Anyway, I naturally started out with Jupiter, and it was actually good enough seeing that I put the 6mm in Keppler, and magnified it with the 5mm even. A couple of dark bands were obvious.

I decided to continue my little Messier marathon from last night, since I knew I'd missed a few by looking when they had gone behind the house. I caught M78 - which is a neat splodge of nebulosity with two stars seemingly embedded in it; and M37, which in the 10mm was large, faint, with many distinct stars; in the 21mm, more of a grey smudge, although some individual points were still distinct. M36 looked similar, with a shape I'm claiming as like a starfish. I missed M74, M38, and M34 by not being quick enough! So I went to some others: M48 is still a boring open cluster, but M79 is endearing itself by being such a cute little globular.

I was getting a bit put out by the wind by this stage, so J dragged me over to Copernicus and showed me the Grus quartet (which was actually a triplet at this stage, because it wasn't quite dark enough for the whole show), which is always cool: seeing three or four galaxies apparently so close together is breathtaking. He also showed me NGC246, which he is quite in love with: it's a planetary nebula, with three bright points within/to the side; I'm not sure whether they're physically associated with it or not.

We decided to call it an earlier night than normal, so to finish up I dialled up the Popular Deep Sky Objects tour and had a quick spin. I tried for the Witchhead Nebula, knowing it was going to be too big to see the whole thing in one eyepiece (3 degrees!), but hoping I would at least be able to see some nebulosity. I am dubious, although J claims it was obviously greyer in some sections. 47Tuc - such a bright core, so striking an object! - and, of course, the Orion Nebula finished the night off.

And then there was wind

Even more wind last night. Still, at least it kept the possibility of mozzies at bay.

Tragically, I discovered that I could my thumbs all the way through the thumbs of my gloves... very sad. Especially since it got awfully cold.

Anyway, I decided to do a mini Messier marathon for this session, since that required no planning on my part and hey, it's the Messier catalogue! I did try looking at Jupiter first of course, but again it was mush; the seeing was atrocious in the west, and again the wind was not playing nice.

M79: lovely little globular cluster. A couple of bright stars to the side, better with averted vision. Quite irregular.
M77: itty little galaxy. Better in Copernicus with the 10mm, but still no details obvious.
M42 and 43: a favourite, of course. I looked at the Trapezium, and am convinced that I could see three additional faint stars in between the main bright ones. I tried putting the 6mm in, but the wind made focussing a nightmare.
M41: in Copernicus with the 21mm, very bright and interesting; numerous yellow and bright white stars. With the 35mm, boring. In Keppler, the 10mm gave a chaotic and somewhat overwhelming view of the cluster; the 21mm made it more coherent, and showed off the lovely yellow stars in the centre.
M50: chaotic in the 10mm, boring through the 21mm.
M47: a nice enough little cluster with a somewhat interesting arrangement; I liked the line of bright stars through the middle.
M46: could not be seen in the same field of view as M47 through Keppler; good case in point of how awesome Ptolemy is, for wide views. A bit boring, overall, although exciting to see the planetary nebula off to the side (NGC2438).
M45: in Copernicus, it was a group of bright dots with what is apparently nebulosity, but it just looked like haze around individual stars to me. The Pleiades is, I think, best naked eye.
M93: boring... looks a bit like an anvil. Or maybe a teapot.
M48: chaotic in the 10mm; 21mm made it look like the outline of something I couldn't quite figure out.
M67: looks a bit like a comma. Possibly some nebulosity?
M44: some trouble finding this as the Argo thought it was upside down... impossible int he 10mm, and no shape in the 21mm - just looked like a bunch of visual double and triples. Again, more interesting naked eye, where it was a pronounced smudge.
M1: large grey smudge in Copernicus; ditto in Keppler, bigger of course in the 10mm. Not very crabby-looking.
M35: an open cluster; boring except for the fact that it has a little companion that looks like a globular but is actually a really tight little cluster.

And that is when tragedy struck! Well, when I say tragedy, I mean that M36, 37 and 38 were all behind the house AND that the RA encoder died! J gallantly resuscitated it thanks to his trusty Allan key set. At this point it was after midnight and getting awfully cold, so there was no way I was going to re-align. Thus, to bed.

The next night, in the Grampians

To be honest, it felt like a bit of a dud night. I was using Keppler (Tak128), and it was quite windy so it was a little harder to manage than little Ptolemy would have been. Also, I had chosen some dud objects to try and chase: that is, they were smaller and/or dimmer than I realised, so they were hard to find and/or actually see. Le sigh.

Jupiter looked very average. This was largely to do with the wind; it was hard to get a steady view. Basically pointless with the 6mm eyepiece; 10mm was a bit better, with a few bands of cloud visible. I then tried to find a few things but got frustrated, so J hauled me over to Copernicus to show me some galaxies. First, though, IC418: a groovy little planetary nebula, which looked amazing through the 4mm: that's 450x magnification, J assures me, which sounds like a lot. Galaxies: NGC253 (a large grey smudge of a galaxy, brighter at the centre with a couple of very bright spots, which may actually not be physically associated with it? also possibly a dust lane); NGC288, NGC247, NGC300, and NGC7793 (variations on Grey Smudge, some larger than others). Could not see the dwarf galaxy in Sculptor.

To finish the night I went back to Keppler. I looked at the Large Magellanic Cloud (the detail continues to amaze); Omega Centauri (huge, but I think 47Tuc is still my favourite); M79 (a great little globular); M78 (nebula, not that bright); and, naturally, M42. Which was a happy way to finish the night.

Lostock: three potential nights of all-out viewing...

Ice in Space Astro Camp: three nights, at a remote Scout camp, with ~100 keen amateur astronomers+hangers-on. What could possibly go wrong?

Thursday night: some sucker holes!... but cloudy. Also, rain.

Friday night: cloudy.

Saturday: the sun was out enough that a dude had his solar scope out, and we wandered over to be bothersome and have a squizz. I saw prominences! And the surface of the sun! Without my eyeball boiling!! ... I might be in love...

For all that it was annoying that we didn't get to observe every night, the camp was awesome. There was a lot of telescope-ogling, and deep discussions about eye pieces. Our cat's perch chairs drew a lot of comment, as did J's scope. The fact that we both have scopes and I wasn't there under sufferance also attracted notice, which I thought was a bit sad; the number of times I basically got asked if I was happy to be there, and then I pointed to my scope and said I got mine first.... There were a few other women there with scopes, but it was by and large a male gathering. It was neat to see a few blokes there with their kids, though, having left mum at home.

Anyway, we did observe on Saturday. Sitting at dinner, we kept sticking our heads out to look at the sky - hopefully noting the holes in the clouds - with the constant refrain being "I've seen it come good from worse...". At one point I realised I could see Jupiter, and I ditched whoever I was talking to and hared it back to our camp. I figured I would at least have a look at it, if nothing else. I caught Venus - lovely little crescent - and Jupiter, and then, all of a sudden, looked up: it was clear! The clouds were almost entirely gone! And wow, the whole camp... changed. Red lights zipping around the place, people excitedly discussing their favourite objects, arguing about collimation: it was cool. We had a little crowd in our area, what with two SDMs next to each other. I got a little frazzled because I couldn't figure out the constellations - I only know Scorpius and Sagittarius in the spring sky! But a couple of people showed me some interesting things, which was really nice of them.

I saw the globulars NGC6388, NGC6397, and NGC6723; BrsO-14 in Corona Australis, a binary with two small white stars; B86 and its accompanying dark nebula - don't think I've ever consciously seen a dark nebula before (the Coalsack doesn't count...); M27 - the Dumbbell Nebula! and possibly Barnard's dwarf galaxy. When I discovered that we could see Pegasus, I checked out the binary that is Matar, which has a bright yellow primary and a faint white secondary. Also through my scope I saw a few other random globular clusters, the Pleiades, M79, and we managed to stay up late enough (bed at 2am!) to see the glory that is Orion (I've missed him!).

Someone set up binoculars near us, through which I finally saw the Andromeda Galaxy. It was... a disappointment, frankly. I couldn't see it naked-eye, probably partly because it just doesn't get that high even in NSW, and through the binos it was just a blob. Still: furthest-away object you can (theoretically!) see naked-eye, and closest galaxy to our own. Nice to cross off the list :)

I also got to have a look through Rod's 20" scope, which he set up next to ours. It required a ladder to get to the eyepiece, and a trailer to bring it to the camp. I saw NGC1365 - a galaxy -which is apparently one of Rod's favourites, and was indeed spectacular. The Saturn Nebula is a weird green colour and does indeed look like Saturn, and 47Tuc was breathtaking. My favourite, though, was being able to see three out of four galaxies known as the Grus Quartet - the other one was just outside the field of view.

All in all, it was a seriously awesome night of viewing, and was a great way to finish the camp.

Dinner, and a show

My darling was in a prolonged bike race in Mansfield this past weekend, so because it was also almost a new moon weekend we took the telescope(s) up with us, for a long weekend.

Wednesday night: cloudy. Bit sad, but not too much. Meant we could sleep well after our outing to the Mansfield Pub.

Thursday: was clear. Very clear. Firstly, though, we had to go and eat our way through DB's voucher for $400 at a local restaurant, won through this event last year. An entertaining night indeed. And then, out to discover just how dark it actually gets in Mansfield. Happily, we were about 1km from the main street - which was actually annoying most of the time, but did mean we were away from most of its (admittedly minimal) glow.

We'd set up the scopes before we left. To explain that plural: I have no picture yet, but J has decided that sharing with me was going to be just too annoying. Therefore he recently bought himself one: a 16" Dobsonian. If he's lucky a picture of it will appear on here at some stage. Because it's newer, and fancier, I decided it ought to be christened Copernicus...

Anyway. It was a great night for viewing. I had planned to find my way around Crux, because it's in a good spot at the moment and southwards-viewing really sucks at our place. I split Alpha Centauri for a start, which is always very satisfying. I also found the Jewel Box by myself, which is also satisfying - and is something I'm having to do all of sudden, what with J off playing with his own telescope. I split a few other doubles, too: Acrux, although I don't think I made out the triple; Gamma Crucis, and Mu Crucis. I also found the clusters NGC 4103 and 4349, and I might have found 4052 but I'm not entirely positive.

I got sick of finding brand new things after a while and swung over to the old reliable, Orion, which is sadly beginning to set awfully early these days! I split Rigel and had a look at the Nebula. Most exciting, though, was finding Mars - getting smaller - AND Saturn! Which looked totally incredible, with the rings directly across the face of the disk so it just looked like the pictures. And we think we saw Titan, too, and possibly another moon even! It was terribly exciting.

J went hunting Messier objects. Found Omega Centauri, M46 and M47 - which do look cool in the same field of view, because the former is a fuzzy blob and the latter is a loose, dense conglomeration; M50, M78, and M79 as well.

We stayed up until about midnight. We'd shared the night with D and K, for a while - they piked a lot earlier than us, but made lots of appreciative noises, especially over Saturn.