StarLog - November 2, 2018
Fall Star Party
Telescope: Obsession 20" f/5Eyepieces: 18mm 82° (141X)
This past Friday evening, the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club had a fall star party, hosted by member Mark S. at his Regina Caelorum Observatory. For my part, I thought it would be fun to bring the club's 20-inch Obsession telescope (provided I could fit it in my car).
Thursday evening, I decided to head out to the TAMU Observatory to see if the scope would fit in my Honda CR-V. I brought my nephew along because I knew the mirror box was going to be heavy (it weighs right at 100 pounds).
There was no way we'd get the telescope in the car without disassembling it, so we spent a few minutes studying how it went together and then proceeded to remove the secondary cage and truss poles. Now we could begin moving it out to the car.
As soon as we stepped out the observatory door, I saw two police cars blocking my car. The officers were approaching us and my first thought was, "Uh oh... I bet they think we're stealing this thing."
One of the officers asked us if we had any guns on us (we didn't). I asked him if he wanted to see our IDs and he nodded. While he checked out our identification, I told him I was with the astronomy club and was taking the telescope to a star party the next day right after work. I then offered to call the observatory director Don Carona, if he wanted. He said it wasn't necessary (I think the dispatcher had completed the ID checks by this point).
He then said that they were here because of reports of shots fired in the area and wondered whether we had heard anything. I explained that we had just arrived a few minutes earlier, but it wasn't uncommon to hear farmers shooting at wild boars.
He apologized for detaining us and I told him I was glad he was protecting us. Then I invited him to the star party. His eyes lit up and said he would love to, but he had to work a basketball game on Friday night.
The two police officers got back in their cars and left, and as soon as we got the telescope loaded into my car (yes, it fit, although I did have to lower the back seat), so did we.
Once home, I decided it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with the telescope by re-assembling and disassembling it a few times while it was still daylight, so that I wouldn't be fumbling around in the dark at the star party. I did this a few times until I was sure I would be able to do it at a dark site, then took a quick peek at a couple of objects before loading the telescope back in the car.
Friday, I went home briefly after work to load up a few last-minute items and then headed out to Mark's place. It's about a 30-minute drive from my house, so I arrived about 6:15pm, only about 20 minutes before sunset.
Upon arrival, I began setting up the large telescope. Warren came over to help me out and between us, we got it assembled and somewhat collimated in short order. Unfortunately, I think we didn't get all the truss poles completely seated, because only a couple of my eyepieces would come to focus. If we'd had more time, I probably would have removed the secondary cage and tried seating all the poles again, but it was already getting dark, so we did a few final tweaks on the collimation and decided it was good enough for tonight.
As twilight descended, Mars was the first celestial object we saw. It made a great object to align the finder on, but the 20 inches of aperture made it too bright to see much detail. I didn't have a neutral density filter to cut down on the brightness so I'd have to leave Mars for the smaller scopes to look at.
Instead, I turned to Saturn. It was pretty and low enough in the sky that you could look through the eyepiece without needing a ladder. The Cassini Division wasn't as clearly defined as I thought it should be, but I wasn't sure whether this was due to poor collimation or atmospheric conditions. Hopefully, as the sky got darker, the telescope would perform better.
Most of the folks had shown up by this time. By the end of the night, about 15 people attended, and we had a good representation of telescopes. Besides the club's 20-inch Dob, we had a few more Dobsonian reflectors, a few nice refractors and even a Schmidt-Cassegrain.
As for the sky itself, an occasional stray cloud passed by, but overall it was clear and beautiful. The Milky Way was visible across the entire sky, stretching from the southern horizon all the way through Cassiopeia and into Perseus. Our worst enemy turned out to be dew, which was leaving everything soaking wet as the night wore on.
Now that the sky was getting dark, I took aim at some Messier objects. I don't remember the exact order we viewed these, but that's not very important, anyway.
M15 Pegasus Cluster
Messier 15 was among the first on my list. I call it the "Horse Apple Cluster" because of its roundness and being near the mouth of Pegasus. In the 20-inch, it was a large ball of pinpoint stars, resolvable throughout the core. Indeed, it looked as impressive as the much larger Messier 13 does in my 12-inch telescope.
M57 Ring Nebula (Lyra)
Messier 57, also known as the Ring Nebula, was large, bright and even appeared to have a greenish tint. No central star was visible at 141X, but it still looked impressive with the bright outer edges and fainter nebulosity filling the center.
M37 (Auriga)
The constellation of Auriga was appearing over the horizon, so I turned towards Messier 37. The open cluster was large, filling the eyepiece with stars. A bright orange star was near its center.
M31 Andromeda Galaxy
Mitchell wanted to see Messier 31 (the Great Andromeda Galaxy) to see if he could detect any dust lanes. Only a portion of the galaxy fit in our field of view, but it was still impressive. We easily saw the first dust lane, which is sometimes visible even in my 12-inch scope, but we also saw hints of a second outer dust lane. Amazing!
M35 (Gemini)
Messier 35 is an open cluster at one of the feet of Gemini. To help me remember its location, I call it Castor's Soccer Ball. At 141X, it completely filled the field of view, with little chevron patterns of stars along the outer edges. For fun, I popped in a 30mm eyepiece (85X) and the cluster fit in the field nicely, but several of the stars were no longer visible.
M33 Triangulum Galsxy
Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is very large face-on spiral galaxy that has a very low surface brightness, making it almost impossible for me to see at home. I thought it would be fun to see how the Obsession would handle it. The central core was easily visible and I could even detect the inner parts of the four spiral arms.
NGC-891 Silver Sliver Galaxy (Pegasus)
One object that has eluded me for the past couple of years at home has been NGC 891. This is a large but faint spiral galaxy in Pegasus that is seen edge-on, earning it the nickname "The Silver Sliver." I mentioned to Mark my difficulties in finding this one from home, so he offered to find it for me in the 20-inch. I readily agreed.
Even in the 20-inch, it was somewhat faint. I could immediately see why it would be washed out by the local light pollution at my house. But despite its faintness, it was large and thin, widening a bit in the middle because of its core. It was bisected down the center by an obvious dust lane, and a few brighter foreground stars were superimposed upon it. It looked very nice and I'm happy to have finally seen it in person.
I enjoyed going back and forth between different telescopes and seeing how the objects appeared in different equipment. For me, all the views were beautiful, but for finer details, nothing beats the view through a large telescope.
Another highlight of the night for me was when a large, bright meteor streaked almost overhead. It burned greenish-white for a few seconds. It burned long enough that I had time to tell others to look at the meteor and many had time to turn and see it before it disappeared. Throught the night, we also saw several Taurids. Most were short and bright.
By now, it was after midnight and I was spending more time heating up my eyepieces to remove the dew than I was spending looking through the telescope. I decided to begin the disassembly process and head home. Dave B. came over to help me out and then I began the long dark drive home, my head still full of all the wonderful things I saw tonight.
I'd like to end this report by thanking Mark for his hospitality in hosting this event, to Warren and Dave for helping me set up and tear down the telescope, and to Ginger and others who brought snacks to keep our bellies full and happy throughout the evening. I believe I can safely say that everyone had a great time and look forward to the next dark night under the stars.