[AZ-Observing] Re: Observing Report from Griffin Ranch May 30, 2011

  • From: <bsanden@xxxxxxx>
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 20:34:27 -0700

Stirring account of an amazing night Paul.  

I remember when we were all fresh into the hobby and making our best attempts 
to convey the splendor of a nighttime observing run via articles in the SAC 
newsletters.  Back then the thrill and awe of discovery came through with every 
sentence.  You've captured that again and its gotten me primed for my next deep 
sky run.  

Thanks!


---- L Knauth <Knauth@xxxxxxx> wrote: 
> Observing Report from Griffin Ranch May 30, 2011
> 
>       Last Monday night I went to Ken Sike’s and Bill Van Orden’s little 
> knoll just northeast of the EVAC Griffin Ranch site to specifically take a 
> look at the goings-on toward the core of our galaxy.  The night was calm and 
> incredibly clear with a SQM-L zenith reading of 21.67 around 10 pm.  I chased 
> galaxies on my observing list while the horizontal Milky Way above the 
> eastern horizon rolled up toward the meridian.  When Antares finally 
> culminated, I put in a new 21 mm Ethos on the 25” Obsession and began a 
> journey into the spiral arm of stars, dust, and gas between us and the 
> galactic core.  Little did I know that it would yield the most emotionally 
> overwhelming observing encounter in the 55 years I have been scouring the 
> deep night sky. 
>       After marveling at M4 where loose star chains give the impression of a 
> great unwinding caused by some disrupting influence, I slew east toward the 
> dark interstellar clouds and faint steely gray obscuration that starts just 
> to the east.  Tiny globular cluster N 6144 is the last peep at something 
> distant. It looks to me like its eastern side is dimmed by the encroaching 
> murk and the field stars largely vanish as I scan eastward.  Chasing the 
> meridian along its intersection down the slanting length of westward moving 
> Scorpius, I make repeated diversions to admire clusters and even get a 
> fascinating high power view of the intricately detailed Bug Nebula.  The 
> seeing is so good tonight I can stoke up the power even at this low altitude. 
>       Around 2 am, the galactic core reaches the meridian and I throw off all 
> pretense of observing catalogued objects systematically.  I pull off the 
> drive clutches, grab the truss and just sweep slowly, field by field with the 
> Ethos 21.  I am startled to see an immense glowing veil of background stars 
> appear, each a little infinitesimal point of light.  They are so numerous 
> that there is hardly space between them.  It isn’t just the amorphous glow 
> typical of this region that you get in a smaller scope or in a brighter sky; 
> it is a glow made up of uncountable discrete points of light that I have 
> never before seen as such. Against this background of blazing pinpoints, the 
> brighter, closer stars form a separate and noticeably less numerous 
> population.  But the astounding thing is the dark stringers, elongated 
> patches, and discrete blobs of jet-black obscuring clouds of all sizes and 
> shapes silhouetted against this luminous curtain.  We’ve all seen the big 
> ones in binocs, but here i
>  s telescopic field after field of stringy jet black filaments, swirls, and 
> patches sharply delineated against the stellar multitude--all spangled with 
> pinpoint foreground stars of various brightness and subtle colors.  The 
> intricate boundaries and shapes of the dark clouds are beyond comprehension 
> and certainly beyond verbal description.  Just when you get your breath from 
> one view, the next one moves in with even more spectacular, infinite detail.  
> It goes on and on, field after field.  The number of stars seen in one gulp 
> continually astonishes.  Then, obscuring strands appear that have that steely 
> gray sheen indicating they are reflecting starlight or actually glowing in H 
> alpha.  They are especially noticeable when they appear in contrast with or 
> grade into jet black counterparts in the same field. For nearly an hour, I 
> can only marvel, gasp, and exult over what I am seeing.  I put in a 13mm 
> Ethos and find even more detail in these dark networks!  Unbelievable!  I 
> have s
>  wept these areas a hundred times with my old 12.5” and even twice with the 
> 25”, but never with eyepieces like these or on a night like this.  This is 
> all new and glorious. For an interval, I feel like I am on top of the Mount 
> Everest of amateur astronomy.  Even of human existence. How many human eyes 
> have seen sights like this?  Who even imagines it is possible?  I think this 
> might even choke up a person without a soul.  All the effort to acquire the 
> biggest transportable optics, to bleed bucks for the best eyepieces, to get 
> everything working, and to opportunistically travel to distant dark sky 
> locations when conditions are right is here yielding a payoff beyond what 
> dreams are made of.
>       M7 moves into the field and I see it in palpable 3D in front of more 
> distant innumerable stars seen around and through this brilliant cluster. The 
> uniquely ring-shaped dark cloud Barnard 294 floats into a 13mm Ethos field 
> with the background stars shining in the middle hole with undiminished 
> intensity.  What vagaries of history led to this shape?  Peculiar star 
> cluster NGC 6451 with its big vacant lane running down the middle appears.  
> The ambient background stars are absent in this band, and it has a barely 
> visible gray sheen relative to some of the inky black clouds in the vicinity. 
>  This all gives a visceral impression that the lane is not an absence of 
> stars but rather obscuration by a thin dark filament floating somewhere 
> between here and there.  And so it goes.
>       At length, the climax along the meridian is over. The low-lying 
> galactic center is now rapidly sinking into the southwest and more long-lived 
> Milky Way skies are rotating into view.  I do the usual peeks at M8, the 
> Trifid, and M17.  All are mind-boggling views, but I am exhausted and still 
> reeling from the ecstatic stellar drenching just passed.  It is coming up on 
> 3 am, the sky is already brightening, and I am too old to continue on, great 
> night that it is.  I wake up around noon to wind and clouds.  Still seared 
> and shell-shocked by cosmic views of unsurpassed splendor, the afternoon 
> drive back through Globe and into the Phoenix Valley is bewildering,
>       I have been searching deep photos of these regions on the web tonight 
> and am astonished at the inadequacy of how they represent what you can 
> actually see at higher magnification.  While the photos certainly indicate 
> the star density, the stars are little blebs and clots typically touching one 
> another. Ugly. The dark clouds loose much of their definition and the small 
> delicate filaments are lost in the overexposed clutter.  It is altogether 
> different and vastly more spectacular in reality.  Seeing is believing.  I 
> now burn to repeat the experience at an even darker, higher site and under 
> even better skies.  North Rim?
>       There is no evidence of any obscuring material in NGC 6451 in the 
> tiresome photos I have seen tonight.  There is, however, an extensive, linear 
> black cloud extending right up to the edge of the cluster.  I remain 
> suspicious that there is more to this cluster than stars.  AJ Crayon has a 
> nice sketch in the DSOG and Steve Coe devotes a page in his DSO book to this 
> cluster with its peculiar dividing raceway. 
> 
> Videmus Stellae!!
> 
> Paul Knauth--
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> 

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