OR 4: Greed

[Akarsh Simha]

(continued from OR 3)

Tuesday night was cloudy along most of the Californian coast, so I decided I was done observing and rolled out of Burrito Hill. I spent the night somewhere on highway 1 in San Luis Obispo county, after enjoying a beautiful evening drive. The next day, I worked out of a nice coffee shop and then a beachside vista, and once I was done asked myself the question "If I were to camp tonight, why not go somewhere I could also observe the sky from".

Not knowing the area, I scouted out spots that could double up as observing sites that were not a substantial detour from my planned route. I found a site called "Miranda Pines" marked on Astrospheric. Not bad, it was only a half hour detour. Considering we routinely drive 3 hours each way to get dark skies, this is nothing. I resupplied at Morro Bay and drove up there to arrive by nightfall. The dirt road up was not as rough as the Burrito Hill Highway, and I left the truck in 2WD throughout. The price though, it was 8 miles, so the drive was only slightly less annoying. It was interesting to see another part of California that I'd never seen before, yet extremely beautiful—first driving through the hills along Highway 166, and then turning off onto the Sierra Madre road in the national forest, as I gained altitude to the 4000ft Miranda Pines campground.

When I arrived at Miranda Pines campground, I was greeted by another camper. "Oh no", I thought to myself, as I discovered there was little room or privacy at the campground. However, Levi, my fellow camper was a nightscaper and amateur astronomer; he had a dim red light with him! We bonded over astronomy and all sorts of things over the two days we spent together, and I owe him a visit to his wood shop to see his CNC router!

I had vacillated, given the iffy forecast, between setting up my binoculars vs telescope—after all, it was Perseid night, so nothing would be lost in just looking up. Thinking to myself, "I might as well spend two nights here", I went with the scope. I had a few gaffes setting up and Levi helped me through them. I started on some bright stuff to show Levi, including the Hercules Globular M13, which obviously got a "Wow! Wow!" reaction. The Veil nebula was a bit disappointing due to the brighter sky (a good Bortle 4, or a bad Bortle 3). Plus, it was windy as hell so I did not have my light baffle on.

Miranda Pines isn't a great place for a big dob because of tree obstruction. I settled on sacrificing the deeper southern sky for Cygnus; I still managed to grab several southern targets, just perhaps 20 minutes after meridian transit. The wind was blowing out of the south or southwest, so by sheer luck the trees provided a windbreak and my telescope held steady. If the gnats were an incessant bother at Burrito Hill, here it was the wind. It remained windy with crazy gusts through the day, and mostly through the night as well.

The forecasts in Astrospheric had agreed on clear skies, but nothing could be further from reality. This time, I had both the wind to wrestle with and the clouds.

I started my program trying to find Cannon 2-1, but the wind was blowing down the tube which bloated the stars bigger than I have ever seen them in any eyepiece. Whoa. Plus I realized dust was hitting my mirror and quickly switched gears. Of course, within a night, my mirror had accumulated so much dust that I was seeing halos around stars again. Oh well.

I settled for pointing to Draco, away from the wind.

NGC 6643

A pretty bright galaxy. There was a lot of variability in the seeing, but overall it was pretty good away from the wind. I was able to see the disk as a mottled glow with plenty of knots. At 830×, one particular knot at the southeast of the stellar (but not very bright nucleus) stood out clearly. I also got many definitive glimpses of the prominent spiral arm going southwest from the southeast of the core. I could not pick up the condensation at its end, though. Haze rolled in precluding further study.

NGC 6643, from the Legacy Survey

So okay, I resigned myself to chasing suckerholes until my enthusiasm persisted.

Sh2-83

I looked at my list and found Sh2-83 lay between sucker holes. It is just outside the naked-eye Coathanger cluster. Surprisingly to me, the nebula changed appearance and did not substantially brighten when using a filter. I later realized this is because it has many faint stars superposed on it. Without the filter, I was seeing a combination of star glow and gas.

Clouds rolled in again and I was chatting with Levi. However, I thought of a plan: there were a few more interesting things near the Coathanger, I could make a program of observing them. I'd easily know when a cloud was covering the naked-eye cluster. I observed NGC 6802, a particularly nice open cluster, and IC 1299 which deserves not more than a passing mention. However, of those, Abell 59 was interesting

Abell (PN) 59

Abell 59 was pretty tough, and the conditions—a modest Bortle 4 with passing haze—did not help. All I could do is detect the glow, and the best detection was offered by an 18mm Orthoscopic eyepiece producing about 160×

After this, the clouds got too untenable to continue. In desperation, I looked at Saturn which was peeking the tree tops that formed my southern obstruction. The seeing was not good either. How I wish I'd had the sense to point to Saturn at Burrito Hill. When even that got hosed, I looked at the spectrum of Vega just so I could confirm that I knew how to use the Spectre visual spectroscope.

Anyway, I was really starting to get tired and I had work meetings in the morning, so I shut down the telescope. I put the caps on my eyepieces, the lid on the telescope mirror, the secondary cover, the dust cover, and set up my car seat for "bed" and when I was about to get into it, I looked up at the sky. Fully clear. No wind. It was as if the sky had chosen to punish me for my greed and then tantalize me with a clear sky right when I was going to bed. Even the Perseids were not particularly mesmerizing. I saw a few very nice fireballs but the rate was very slow.

The forecast for the next night looked dismal... the marine layer would apparently engulf the 4000ft peak and hose us with fog.

Clear Skies

Akarsh