[AZ-Observing] A beautiful night in the Arizona desert

Howdy all;
Matt Luttinen and I had ourselves a really special evening for a Thursday night 
crazy observing run to the Arizona desert.  Driving about 75 miles west from 
central Phoenix (Eagle Eye Road) got us into nice, dark skies.  The night 
really cooperated and we had excellent seeing and transparency.  We held and 
constantly split a Struve double in Bootes that is 1.2 arcsec separation, using 
Matt's 12 inch at 200X.  The width of the Milky Way was excellent, as good as 
it gets at low altitude, so I rated the transparency at 8 out of 10.

The view over the western horizon was magnificent!  Crescent Moon, Crescent 
Venus, Tiny Mars, Ringed Saturn and Aqua Colored Comet NEAT.....Wowwie, Wow, 
Woww!

Matt and I spent at least 90 minutes just going among those objects moving 
between our two scopes and trying different eyepieces and filters.  Now is the 
time that Venus is interesting to me....that little "moon" is fascinating and 
at 40X in the refractor gives a wide field so you can see it and some stars 
surrounding it...very nice.

Comet NEAT.....is, well, neat......it is still naked eye.  Matt and I agreed on 
about magnitude 4.  The coma is still a high surface brightness object in the 
scope.  It really grows in size with averted vision.  We tried 200X in Matt's 
12 inch and could see a bright fountain of material coming off the nucleus in a 
cone shape.  The tail about 4 degree long my 8X42 binoculars.  We both marveled 
at how well this comet has held up its brightness for quite a while.....almost 
a month for us northerners.

I went out to try out two refractor that I had acquired from some trading.  One 
is an Orion 4" f/6 and the other a Konus 4.7" (120mm) f/8.  Both are doublet 
lenses and both tube assemblies have 2 inch focusers.  I swapped them onto a 
CG5 mount one at a time.  I know that is not the best testing technique, but it 
is what I have.  To jump to the end, I found that the views in the longer scope 
are darker and more contrasty and the views in the shorter scope are wider and 
the field is a little grayer and less contrasty.  But, I could put just a 
little more power onto the small scope and almost match what I saw in the 
longer one.  There is not way to get the longer scope to provide the very wide 
field of view of the short focal length refractor, so that is the one I am 
going to keep.  

Once the Milky Way got up nicely around 11 o'clock I started scanning.  I 
really enjoyed just sitting in a chair with the 8X42 binocs and making my way 
up and down Our Galaxy.  Start at the Stinger of Scorpius and end above Deneb 
in Cygnus....lots to see.

The views in the RFT refractor are also terrific.  I really love my Nexstar 11, 
but it is a narrow field scope and I started down the path to some type of wide 
field instrument and this is certainly filling the bill.  Using the 4 inch f/6 
with both a 35mm and 22mm Panoptic eyepieces just makes the Milky Way come 
alive.  M6 and M7 jump out of the Milky Way background, with lots of stars 
resolved and that background glow of stars along with dark lanes winding their 
way through the field.  I spent time with the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M 
24, and it was worth it.  It is covered with chains of stars that are in 
"front" of a silvery glow of millions of stars.  The dark markings are 
fascinating with all those stars as a background. 

OK, I'll stop gushing.....it was a great night, we had a great time, I wish one 
for you some night.

Clear Skies;
Steve Coe





Author "Deep Sky Observing--The Astronomical Tourist"
Saguaro Astronomy Club website
www.saguaroastro.org
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