[AZ-Observing] Another good night at Vekol.

  • From: Joe Larkin <joeclarkin@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 09:56:26 -0700 (PDT)

Quite a few people turned up at Vekol Road Saturday night. It was the
biggest turnout for Vekol that I have seen in several months. This
obviously was a major weekend for Arizona observers based on the
turnout at Vekol and the reports of other observers at other sites.

The temperature was great, the air was pretty still and bugs were
nearly non-existant. One astronomer had an encounter with a baby
rattlesnake!

It was damp for Vekol, but I didn't get any significant dew on any
optics. The dew did curl some pages of my books and charts.
Transparency was good, but perhaps not excellent. 

Of particular note was the Gegenshein which was pretty apparent at
about 12:30 am. 

Mars' polar cap and Solis Lacus were well placed early in the
evening. Saturn was well up in the east when I packed up at about 3
am. 

M42 in Jim Guttman's (I hope I got the name right) Binoviewers on
Kerry's 14.5 Starmaster was outstanding. Kerry's scope also showed
the Helix very very well.

I observed some new to me deep south objects in Microscopium and
Sculptor. Sculptor seems to be the home of edge on galaxies from
monsters like NGC253 (very good in Mike's 8" Mak-Newt)and  NGC55,
NGC300 to the bright and tiny NGC148. Mike's scope also did a very
fine job on the Saturn nebula.

Spotting the Bubble Nebula near M52 in Mike's Mak-Newt was also
interesting. It was made easier with UHC and OIII filters. It was
just a haze around a fairly bright star. The key to seeing it was to
spot the haze around the correct star, and not see a haze around
other field stars. 

I mostly observed with my 10" f4.5 dob. I observed a handful of open
clusters that are part of the Herschell list but not in Burnham's. I
spotted 4 out of 5 of the Burnham's object in Microscopium and all
the objects from Burnham's in Sculptor with the exeption of the
Sculptor System, a dwarf galaxy. I may have spotted a glow in the 10"
at low power, but it could also have been averted imagination.

I also brought out my 3" F5 Jaeger's achromat which I hadn't used for
quite a while. It did very well on M31, M8 and M20, M42, the double
cluster and several other objects. I spotted the brightest portion of
the Veil with it. Of course, the Veil was much more impressive in
Gordon's 14.5" Starmaster. He also provided me with a very fine view
of M27 and its central star.

My little refractor didn't show any detail on Mars when pushed way
past it's limits with a 7mm ortho and 2x barlow, but it did show an
nice red disk with a pretty purple halo. 

Joe Larkin

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  • » [AZ-Observing] Another good night at Vekol.