[AZ-Observing] December Report from Hovatter Norte
- From: L Knauth <Knauth@xxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:52:03 -0700
I sat up with the universe Thursday and Friday nights at Hovatter Norte with my
25? Obsession. It was repeated climbs up the tall ladder and then getting
sucked through the little black hole on out into the cosmos. It isn?t just a
telescope; it?s a portal.
The Thursday night sky was gauzed over with cirrus until about midnight when it
thinned out until 3:30 am enough to give acceptable views of brighter deep sky
objects. Open cluster NGC 7789 was its usual glorious sight, but I was
distracted from appreciating its great age and peculiarly-even star
distribution by the appearance of concentric black rings in the myriad of
stars. Am I the only one who sees these? It is almost certainly just a
Rorschach Test apparition, but it is really striking in this cluster.
Moving to the young, beautiful cluster NGC 457, I decided to see if my own
Rorschach impression would duplicate the owl, kachina doll, dragonfly, or ET
patterns others celebrate for this one. Indeed, I saw the eyes, the nose,
?.but then a beard?. whoa! It?s Jesus! Or,..... wait! ?is it? instead,
?..Willie Nelson? At which point, I decided to never rorschach any
astronomical object ever again. Burnham notes that the bright star, Phi
Cass, is one of the most luminous stars known, and that the Sun would be 17th
magnitude at this distance. The contrast between this blazing star and the
faintest in the cluster field that would represent the Sun really brought this
cluster to astrophysical life for me. Much more inspiring than silly pattern
nonsense. Let?s delete all these stupid names for our wonderful deep sky
objects!
Friday night had only a few strands of cirrus overhead until about midnight.
What a sight the naked-eye sky is this time of year! Forget the dark sky
meter; there are too many bright stars everywhere. I took advantage of the
light gathering power of the 25? and slow-slewing push-button drives to explore
deep sky objects at 353X (9mm Nagler). It takes about a half hour to really
cruise around M33 with this; one splendor after another drifts through the
field. Endless rifts, hazy star clouds of all shapes, and emission nebulas.
Then there is the drive down the inner dark lane of M 31! I had never done it
at this magnification before. Simply makes you gasp over and over at the
amount of structure. To think I was amazed when I first saw the lanes at all
in my first telescope (6?). Then, there is cruising around the extended area
of the Orion nebula. There are simply endless arrays of tiered clouds--some
luminous, some not so luminous, and some dark, and some jet black. The wall of
the cavity away from the trapezium is full of detail. Then, put in a 31 mm
Nagler (102x) and see the whole spectacle with its brilliant green glowing
clouds and the dull gray and ghastly purplish clouds enshrouding all. There is
never a time I?ve not looked at this object on the meridian, but this was the
first high power tour. It left me pretty stunned. Still dreaming about it
today. Bring on the January new moon observing window! Portal, that is.
Videmus Stellae!!
Paul Knauth
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