[Chaos-l] Observing Report- Medoc Mountain State Park: 20 FEB 2009

[Robert Nielsen]

Well, it's too bad that no one else other than Allen and I (and Allen's 
friend Don) could make it last Friday night to Medoc Mountain State Park 
... because it was a great night!  The skies were the best I had ever 
seen there ... but you have to remember I've only observed at Medoc for 
a couple of months.   Allen was pretty sure he had seen darker skies ... 
but not many.   So the skies were good (at least a limiting magnitude of 
5 ... all stars in Ursa Minor visible, even down close to the horizon), 
and the night turned out to be a night filled with lessons to be learned 
on an observing trip:

Lesson 1: Trust the Clear Sky Clock

I don't know if you remember what the Clear Sky Clock for Medoc Mountain 
looked last Friday ... but it was basically clear the entire day except 
for a cloudy patch at 9-10 PM.   Amazingly, there WAS a patch of clouds 
that blew over right about then!   I still don't know how the Canadian 
Meteorological Service figures that out ...

Lesson 2: Some Unforeseen Bug Will Appear In The Equipment

Well, I guess this isn't true for those of you that have basic 
Dobsonians and paper star charts and all you need to do is point and 
observe, but the cold weather was causing electrical types of problems 
to crop up for both Allen and me.   Allen encountered his "external 
power low" on his Argo Navis ... but it seemed to keep working or he 
changed some internal AA batteries and got it working again in short 
order.  I, on the other hand, kept having my computer "hang".   Well, I 
guess technically it "froze" ... literally.   The operating temperature 
for my laptop (from the manual) doesn't go below 40 degrees ... and when 
it gets that cold the computer stops working.   The last time I was at 
Medoc (low temp around 30) I used a chemical hand warmer under the hard 
drive ... and it kept working.   This time (low temp around 25) that 
wasn't working.   So I did things the old-fashioned way and star-hopped 
and found a couple of the brighter targets I was looking for, but 
unfortunately Canis Major was setting below the trees ... and one of the 
things I wanted to see was "Thor's Helmet" (NGC2359).   I was getting 
bummed out ... couldn't find it ... but luckily Allen came to my 
rescue.   He went to his "trailer of astronomical goodies" and came back 
with a dew heater strip for an eyepiece box.   I attached it to my dew 
heater system, and once it warmed up, and kept the temp around my hard 
drive high enough my computer worked perfectly for the rest of the 
night.   Moral of the story?  Well, you don't need the full laptop pad 
heater to keep your laptop running at 25 degrees F.   Just use the 
smaller eyepiece case strip.   It costs less and only uses 0.8 Ah 
(instead of 3 Ah for the laptop pad).  It's also nice to have someone 
around who might have some extra equipment.

Lesson 3: You'll Learn Something New If You Get Out And Observe!

Well, at least I usually do.   This time, it was NGC2905.   Allen was 
using his Argo Navis to find galaxies and happened to find NGC2905.  I 
wandered over to see what he was looking at right then and he showed 
me.   Well, I had been looking at NGC2903 (one of my primary observing 
targets for that night ... a very nice galaxy off the nose of Leo ... 
brighter than some Messier galaxies) and when I looked through his 
eyepiece, what he was looking at looked EXACTLY like NGC2903!  So he 
punched in NGC2903 to see what it looked like ... and the scope barely 
moved, if it moved at all.  He looked at it and agreed.  Then we 
switched back to NGC2905 ... and again, no motion (or not much) and 
essentially the same view.   I looked on my laptop, and couldn't really 
tell anything.  So we chalked it up to gremlins or bad data on the Argo 
Navis.  When I got home, I looked it up on the web, and found out that 
NGC2905 is actually an HII star-forming region inside of NGC2903!   So 
essentially they ARE in the same part of the sky.   To see NGC2905 (just 
like NGC604 inside of the Triangulum Galaxy) you need to use a filter.   
Well, next time ...

So on to the observing ...

I had setup most of my equipment (the pier and the mount) in the 
daylight, and then had accompanied Don (one of Allen's friends) down to 
the picnic pavilion to start the fire and setup my coffee maker (yes, I 
brought my Keurig coffee maker and the three of us drank almost a gallon 
of coffee by the time the night was over).   Allen showed up and setup 
his scope, and after finishing my dinner we headed out to observe.  I 
polar-aligned my mount, with the help of Don put the OTA on the mount, 
and then took a look at the Orion Nebula, just to see how the night 
was.  Amazing!   All six Trapezium stars were visible, and the 
steadiness of the star images made me think this was going to be a good 
night!    I also took a quick look at the Flame Nebula off the side of 
Alnitak, and then turned my scope towards Andromeda.   I wanted to check 
out Gamma Andromedae, since I felt in the mood to see a pretty double 
star ... and wanted to compare it to Algeiba (Gamma Leonis) since I had 
read that Algeiba is one of the "finest double stars in the sky" 
(Burnham).  Well, to me, Gamma Andromedae is nicer, due to the color 
difference.  It is also easier to split (Algeiba is a pretty close 
double).   After these couple of observations, I wanted to start my 
laptop and begin observing some galaxies.   Well, this is when the 
problems started, and after a while of frustration, I headed back to the 
fire for some coffee and snacks.  Everyone else came as well (trust me, 
you don't need much of an excuse to go back to the fire in 25 degree 
weather!)

When we headed back over to the scopes, the sky was hazier ... which I 
didn't realize meant a cloud bank (the one I mentioned the Clear Sky 
Clock predicted) was on the way.   Still, there were some sucker holes, 
and Saturn was blazing right through the thin clouds so we all decided 
to take a look at it.   It was magnificent ... all through the night.    
Admittedly, it looks a little strange, with the two "sticks" coming out 
of the side of the planet where the rings are edge on ... but like 
Michael Hrivnak mentioned in his observing blog from earlier in the 
week, you could see some bands on the planet (both in the northern and 
southern hemisphere), and every now and then when the clouds parted, you 
could see the thin black line that was the ever-so-thin shadow of the 
rings on the planet.   It really took well to higher magnification, and 
I went all the way to 225X and the image was rock solid.  At almost 400X 
there was some wobble, but there were steady glimpses as well.   I could 
see three moons ... and later in the night when I looked at Saturn again 
two of the smaller moons were right next to each other.

Given the amount of clouds at that point (but knowing things would clear 
... thanks to the Clear Sky Clock) we headed back to the pavilion to 
warm up at the fire and have some coffee.  After the break, we headed 
back out and I asked Allen for a chance to see Thor's Helmet through his 
20" Obsession.   Without a filter, it was basically invisible (actually, 
by moving the scope, you could see some of the nebula, but I would never 
have found it in my scope) ... but once you added the O-III filter, it 
was amazing in Allen's scope.   The round, bubble part looked 
three-dimensional (owing to the brighter area at the bottom).  The 
"wings" at the top were strong, and wispy.   It really is a great 
object, and took up most of the center of Allen's 13mm eyepiece.   In 
dark skies with a large scope, it is realy a pleasure.  Not sure what my 
12-inch would have done ... but there's always the next time.

By this point, Don had given up, and Allen and I started our observing 
or primarily globular clusters (Allen) and galaxies (me) ... although we 
would sprinkle in a good bit of the other category.    As I said before, 
I wanted to check out NGC2903 off the front of Leo.   It looks nice, and 
by moving the scope a little, you could see the "barred" nature of the 
galaxy.  But I was actually expecting more detail, more of a view of the 
arms.  I did get that from M51.   On this night, I saw more of the arms 
of M51 than I had ever seen.   Perhaps it was the cold and I was 
hallucinating, but I could honestly see the individual arms as distinct 
gray lanes and what looked like structure in the smaller galaxy of the 
pair.   M101 also showed some structure ... and was quite large, 
especially in Allen's 13mm Ethos.   It had more of an M33 look ... with 
a sprinkling of stars (or H-II regions).  I finished up Leo by looking 
at the Leo Triplet (M65, M66, and NGC3628) and the pair of galaxies M95 
and M96 ... both sets of galaxies that can be seen in the same field of 
view (under low power).  NGC was much, much fainter than M65 and M66, 
and I wanted to see the bars in M95 and M96, but couldn't really.   I 
probably should have spent more time teasing out the details of these 
galaxy groups, but I was looking forward to hitting Coma Berenices, 
Virgo, and Canes Venatici.   

In Virgo, I started with the equilateral triangle of galaxies I saw in a 
previous observing session - including M84 and M86 (both elliptical 
galaxies with little detail) ... which I later found out was the start 
of Markarian's Chain (of galaxies).  I spent about 20 minutes looking at 
the whole chain, spending a lot of time on M88, the spiral galaxy in the 
group.  There are a lot of small "faint fuzzies" in the area as well, 
and I enjoyed just wandering around with my scope.   I then took a look 
at M98 ... and then M104 (Sombrero Galaxy).  Wow!   Again, this was 
about the best I had ever seen this galaxy.  It looked just like 
pictures I had seen on books.  A very strong and distinct dust lane, and 
the bulge at the top very clear in direct vision.  Interestingly, there 
was very little of the bulge visible under the dust lane ... but I spent 
10 minutes looking at it, switching eyepieces and picking up as much 
detail as I could.   The next object in Virgo that I wanted to see was 
Comet Lulin, and in my scope it was a fuzzy blob with a brighter core 
and definite extension in one direction (the dust tail).  I dropped the 
magnification down and didn't see much more.   Allen pulled out his 
image-stabilized binoculars, and it was more difficult to find than I 
expected.   Not much of a tail visible in the binoculars, but you could 
tell the object stretched to the two sides ... which bears out in images 
I have seen online.

Next was Coma Berenices ... and I started out with NGC4565, the notable 
edge-on galaxy that John Miller asked me to check out.   It is a really 
great sight, and is different from a lot of other edge-on galaxies 
because it has a very distinct "bump" at the nucleus.  I wanted to 
compare this galaxy with NGC891 in Andromeda, another great edge-on ... 
but unfortunately my technical problems limited my time before Andromeda 
set.  While I was looking at NGC4565, Allen was looking at M53, which is 
small but a very nice globlular cluster in Coma.  The other two galaxies 
I wanted to check out in Coma were M100 (a large, grand design face-on 
galaxy) and something called Hickson 61 ... or "the box".   The latter 
was very interesting object.   It is a group of four galaxies, three of 
which look like edge-on galaxies, and they form a "box" with each galaxy 
on the side.  It was a little faint, but definitely visible.   Something 
to check out if you have dark skies.

In Canes Venatici, there were three galaxies I wanted to see, and of 
course, M3.   More on the globular cluster later ... but I started with 
NGC4490 and NGC4484, which is a pair of interacting galaxies.  Sure 
enough, you could easily see the curvature of the larger galaxy toward 
the smaller one, and the deflected, morphed shape of the smaller 
galaxy.   There was not a lot of detail in each of the galaxies, but the 
shape of each smudge was very clear.  The pair looked like the 
simulations I have seen on the web where one galaxy passes through 
another.  Next was NGC4449, which looked interesting in the "Night Sky 
Observer's Guide" ... since it was sprinkled with stars and had an 
irregular ... almost square shape.   The NSOG said it was similar to the 
Large Magellenic Cloud, and it looked similar to pictures I have seen (I 
saw the LMC in Costa Rica once, without a telescope ... and it was 
similar).   Finally, I looked at NGC4631 ... known as the "Herring" or 
"Whale" galaxy ... and it was large .. kinda shaped like NGC253 in 
Sculptor, but lacking the foreground stars.  I thought it looked more 
like a herring than a whale.

As I said, Allen had been looking at globular clusters for a while, and 
when I looked at M3, I was just stunned.   It has always been one of my 
favorites, ever since I saw it in dark skies on the Blue Ridge Parkway, 
and this night it was magnificent.   It seemed to be framed better in my 
16mm Nagler, and the sky was allowing higher magnification, so I focused 
in and out, seeing the detail emerge in the arms, and then in the 
core.   I decided to look at a couple of other good globulars, and 
looked at M13 ... again, magnificent (but it should be) ... M92, very 
nice ... and then M5.  For some reason I don't think I had ever looked 
at M5 before (in Serpens Caput).  It is a very interesting globular - 
asymmetrical.   There are trails of stars emerging from the cluster more 
on one side than the other.   Allen said he thought it looked like a bug 
with legs ... I could definitely see that.  I probably spent 20 minutes 
comparing these globular clusters with each other ... trying to remember 
the characteristics that John Miller had described to me (compactness, 
density, etc).   It was heaven ... since I like globulars so much!

Does it sound like a lot of observing happened in a batch there ... 
well, it did!   Allen and I took a break about 4 AM ... and realized 
that we had observed from midnight to 4 AM with not much of a break.  It 
was just too much fun!   Well, as we walked back to the pavilion to warm 
up, I saw Cygnus almost completely up in the east, and Scorpius in the 
south.   I thought to myself, I think this is the *second arm* of the 
Mily Way that I had seen that night.   Earlier in the evening, there was 
the arm with Orion and Perseus.  Now it was the arm with Cygnus and 
Sagittarius.   Pretty amazing.

Well, we warmed up, but when we went back out after that break, I think 
Allen thought it was just too cold to keep going.   I quickly put an 
O-III filter on the 22mm eyepiece, and tried to see the Veil Nebula.   I 
could see the part around 52 Cygni ... but it was pretty low in the sky 
and not very good.   I quickly checked out M57 (Ring Nebula) and it was 
very nice ... but the central star was not visible.   Quickly looked at 
the double-double (Epsilon Lyrae) and it was more interesting and better 
framed in the finder scope than the main scope.   Allen was almost done 
packing up ... so I looked at M13 and M3 one more time, then had Allen 
help me get the OTA off my mount (which I really can't do myself) and 
thanked Allen for the wonderful night.  Allen left, and I stuck around, 
ate some breakfast back at the fire, and then packed up in the daylight 
... scraping frost off all the equipment, including the laptop ... which 
was still working.

So sorry for the long observing report ... but A LOT happened last 
Friday.   As I've said before, Medoc Mountain State Park is a great 
place to observe.   It has amenities (restroom, fireplace) and with the 
addition of the coffee maker, the breaks are pretty comfortable.  It was 
a little cold, but that helps the clarity of the images.   And it will 
get warmer.  But next month, I think we are headed toward Pettigrew 
State Park ... with even darker skies.  Come join us at the end of March 
if you can!

Robert Nielsen