OR: JJ and the Regulars

[Mark Wagner]

We had a nice group show up at Henry Coe State Park, overflow parking lot last week on May 7th, me, Richard, Joshua H and new guy Jim Best from Berkeley (comprising JJ).  I'm certain everyone had a great night, as reported elsewhere we had blackout conditions above a thick fog layer extinguishing SJ and Coyote Valley.

We began with a neon blood-orange twilight glow over the black silhouetted Santa Cruz mountains, watching it deepen while revealing a brilliant Venus and shortly thereafter Jupiter.  The latter was showing nice detail, and Io approaching the limb for a frontal pass, with anticipation of a shadow transit an hour later.  There was a lot of excitement, even prior to the realization of the pending blackness that became apparent as the night proceeded.

Soon after seeing Io move onto the planet's disk, I began pointing my 18" f/4.5 Obsession at bright well known double stars; Castor, Algieba,and I forget what else (the hazard of writing from week old memory).  But all were worthwhile, as we waited for dark, and the deeper universe to reveal.

Did I say we were having fun?  All the dramas and distractions of life dropped away as galaxies began appearing, in the eyepiece.  Singular focus, astronomy Q&A banter, tweaking gear, and the realization we had excellent transparency as deep sky targets manifested early and easy before true dark.  Fun, right?

The first target I went after was NGC 4319, along with its neighbor NGC 4291.  I found them easy, the prior brighter and seemingly bisected with the brighter section SE.  A bright area in the NW apparently detached (think it was a dark lane) contained a brightening that could have been an offset nucleus, or the quasar Mk205.  Whatever it was, it was certain.  The other galaxy sat at the far corner of a parallelogram of stars. I could see both, Richard too, but at least one of the others was not picking it up.  I think this is use of averted vision (I think inherently applied) and experience.

There was a lot of running back and forth between telescopes, a relaxed and un-rushed pace, plenty more discussion.  I was surprised at Jim's surprise that I was manually pointing the telescope around and hitting objects without the now ubiquitous finding apps and/or gotos.  I am starting to think of myself as the Last StarHopper.  Jim is a mountain climber, and I talked briefly about the dopamine reward of freeehandely moving the scope from star group/pattern from a jumping off point to the destination.  I felt it was like climbing, in that the effort augments the reward. Anyway, it how I do it, doubt that's gonna change.  Anachronisms do exist.

I also spent some time on an oft-neglected planetary nebula, NGC 4361 easily found within the smallish bounds of Corvus' rhombus.  I'd never properly blown it up (don't worry, still exists), but when I did I was treated to some very nice detail, what I thought was maybe an easily bright central double (turned out to be high power momentarily unsteady seeing), lots of mish-mash gooey internal stringy detail, and what appeared to be overlapping extended ovals, the very obvious E/W envelope and marginal N/S one. My notes call the inner goo "gauzy".

This was probably about when the bay area disappeared.  Down below were small patches of dimmed light, popping through like separate mag14 galaxies, dotting the valley and into SJ.  The NE still had something of a dome, but I wasn't complaining.

I spent a good amount of time too giving a greatest hits tour since we had a rank newbie.  Big bright globs predominated.  I even tried IC 4617 between M13 and NGC 6207 (off the small locator parallelogram of dim stars, resembling Lyra's bright version), but to fleeting and frustrating results.  This still was Coe, of course!

But the darkness sparkled (can that be a thing?) when I pointed to M51.  All the coiled arms you could hope for, taffy or wet clay-like, the Bridge and NGC 5195, so un-Coe like giving an LSA or Pinnacles result.  An unexpected treat!  In fact, IIRC it showed up in the 9x50 finder without question.

Another fun target was Arp 269, which showed easily in an very easy to find location.  No work, big reward!  Easy location.  They appeared to be ab interacting pair with material shared between. Both are disrupted with brighter sections generally NE/SW with the dimmer member brighter to the ne, brighter has large envelope, and appears to be dim material between the two.  Fascinating.

I'll also mention returning to my favorite, always recalling an amazing view at Bumpass Hell parking lot on Mount Lassen, a nice view of Hickson 68, all members reporting in, bright, wispy/gauzy, close together, nice stars next (mag 6.5) to them giving the feel of a great piece of jewelry, a treasured ring with fine diamonds and stetting. If you haven't seen this one, go to Bumpass Hell (lol).

Lastly, as  testament to experience, as Richard had reported, we had a nice view of the Crescent Nebular off Gamma Cygni.  We kept couching the newbie on what it looked like, as to our (well experienced) surprise he just could not see it!  I guess a picture would have been worth a thousand words.  Maybe next time Jim.  And truthfully, it was still down relatively low and not yet the most dramatically detailed view I've seen.

That was that.  Moon up, scopes down.  A comfortable night a short drive away at  the campground, hot coffee in the morning on the drive down, and like a dream I was home, looking forward to next time.  Ain't observing great!

I did go out again, this Wednesday night, to a new site near Willow Springs with a few other observers.  I do love that area, I spent ten years I'd guess very nearby observing at two private sites.  I knew what to expect, and was not disappointed. I'll wait to read Richard's report from there.

Clear skies!

-- 
Mark

[Richard Navarrete]

Another wonderful OR! It was a great night at Coe for sure . I hope to start working on an OR from last Wednesday sometime today.

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

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[Christopher Kelly]

Hi Mark, wonderful OR!   

there are still a few of us that do it old school, although I have thought recently about upgrading my 25 year old NP101 with encoders.  But the cost and pain of drilling new holes into an old mount makes it go away!

Clears 

 Chris

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[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Wags mused - "I am starting to think of myself as the Last StarHopper."

Naw, they keep showing up, and starting out. In the last several months I've run into 2 starhoppers, one an old guy from Pacific Grove, Charles, and the other young guy from Santa Cruz, Oliver. And you'll have to outlast me to gain that designation.

[Jay Freeman]

I still star-hop often, though a PiFinder or the automated go-to of my Losmandy G-11 and its Gemini 2000 electronics are generally vastly faster. Star-hopping skill are useful when moving from one object to another that is nearby, perhaps only a few eyepiece fields away, or for precisely identifying the location in the field of an object that is only marginally detectable.

Clear sky ...

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman, Deep-Sky Weasel
---------------------
Jay_Reynol...@mac.com
http://JayReynoldsFreeman.com (personal web site)

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