OR: Calstar 2025

[Sean McCauliff]

Work has been very busy and so it's been about two years since I have been to a dark site.  My usual telescope is a Tom O Spica Eyes 25" f/4.  This was purchased from the original owner about 5-6 years ago and the GOTO has never worked correctly.  Driving the telescope trailer over a log probably didn't help.   Tom O fixed it up few weeks before this Calstar;  I was looking forward to getting to view something rather than fiddling with wires.  Initially I did need some help. Randy volunteered his help and Charile's help with the Sitech controller which did need a slight tweak to get to work as some setting in the remote control box had been reset to the default value.  Other than than it was basically perfect GOTO the entire time.  I was going to try every messier that I could possibly see from where I setup, but I misjudged how much the big tree was going to obstruct views of Sagittarius so there was less of that.

Friday night. In shorts until 10pm or so.  Seeing was just kind of ok; turbulent Saturn at 150x.  Observed: M13, M56, M57, Alberio, M71, M27, M2, M72, M73, Saturn, M29, M39, M15, M74, M77, M31, M110, M32, M33, M52, M103, M34, M76, M42, M1, Neptune. 

Stopped at 2:30am or so.  Titan's shadow transit was barely visible on the edge of the (Northern?) polar region.  M33 is still amazing and one day I will go back to it once again to identify different sections of that galaxy.

Saturday night. In shorts until 10pm or so.  Seeing was just ok.  Some clouds early on mostly towards the west.  Also used a TV Genesis this night for some wider field action.  

Observed: M17, NGC {5981, 5982, 5985}, NGC 55, NGC 253

Observed in Genesis: {M24, NGC 6603, some nebula}, M45

I'm not sure which nebula I was looking at in genesis in the same field of view with M24.  It was a very nice view however.   I wrote down some more challenging objects, but wasn't really prepared to extract their details so I'm not really sure I saw them.  In particular I spent much time looking at what I thought was Abel 72, but after comparing my notes with the internet I'm pretty sure I saw some star with nebulosity or just some dust on my eyepiece.  

Sunday night. Colder, need a jacket with the shorts to get to 10pm.  Clouds disappeared shortly after sunset.  Seeing was just ok.  I had grabbed several books before heading out to Calstar and one of them is Hidden Treasures.

Observed: NGC 6201, NGC 6503, IC 1296, NGC 6572, NGC 6709, NGC 6819, NGC 6819, NGC 6866, NGC 7008, NGC 7072, NGC 7789, NGC 7793, Saturn

Stopped at 12:30am

IC 1296 is not on the hidden treasures list.  It is a tiny barred spiral galaxy about 2.5 ring diameters (short edge) away from the M57 (the ring nebula).  It's pretty dim and it would kind of pop in an out of existence at times. Fun to do galaxy hunting next to the ring.

NGC 7027 is supposed to look kind of box shaped, but I was only able to spot several different bright spots with the nebula.

NGC 7789 was a nice OC, perhaps almost as nice as M11.  

Thanks to everyone that organized Calstar. Thanks to Charlie for diagnosing my scitech controller problem.  Thanks to Dan for the food and showing me his book of opinionated observations.  Thanks to Jeff C and Stephen for conversation.

Sean