Tuesday through Monday, October 12-18
I arrived Wednesday afternoon and the main field was essentially filled already. The less desireable lower sloped area was still available. Electricity was already up and functional - faster than last year. I'm camped at the intersection of Mercury & Ceres (each row is named this year).
The weather reports called for full clouds and rain until the weekend. Wednesday evening I was jawing away with some folks at the cantina until around 7.30pm. Then as I was heading back to the field I looked up into a crystal clear sky. Eh? Figuring it was a sucker hole nobody got overly excited. The forecast was still for a night of clouds. Even so, I threw up my Portaball and was observing in about 5 minutes. Greg decided not to risk it so he didn't assemble his & we tag teamed mine. Well the sucker hole lasted a good 4 hours! A heavy fog descended on the field and there was a lot of moisture in the atmosphere which made for really steady skies. "Should I risk assembling my scope?" asks Greg. "Please don't," we all said. 10 minutes after he got it put together the clouds moved in.
Wednesday
Ring Nebula at 500x. It took it.
Cat's Eye (NGC 6543 in Draco). This was a lot of fun. It took awhile to get used to but I was finally able to easily observe the central star (317x) and, seated, even observe a good degree of structure to the inner nebulosity. Whether or not I could see the "cat's eye" formation inside, well, maybe with imagination. I wasn't able to find it (though it was in my 35mm Pan's field of view) as I didn't realize what it looked like at low power, until I was shown how it appears simply as a slightly fuzzy, out of focus star.
A very nice, small galaxy in Andromeda as well as a beautiful double (Almaak - γ). I think the galaxy was 404, as it was near an incredibly bright star which made it either an amazing sight or an annoying brightness, depending on your disposition. Given that, I think it was 404 near Mirach. Applying some power helped nudge Mirach out of the FOV.
Did we observe the Pinwheel, or was that a different face-on spiral? Don't recall
John, a presenter and a guy I observed with a bit last year (double-stars in his Mak) had his 12.5 Discovery nearby. He showed me an absolutely spendid star field in Cygnus which was comprised of a double star, a very beautiful faint globular and a Barnard's dark nebula all within the field of view of a 35 Pan. Very nice. They were near Cyg 63 (near Deneb), and checking my map here I think they were: B361, I.1369 and the double at 47.6 degrees, 21h 10m.
Thursday
The morning started beautifully but just when I considered setting up my Meade with a prominence filter the clouds moved in.
Kept talking about what it would be like to own a 4x Powermate. Thought about trading up my 17mm Nagler to get it (I have a 14mm Meade anyway). I decided to perhaps sell my Nagler next year when Televue's sale ends and just went ahead and bought the 4x Powermate. Can't wait to use it!
We made a trip to a WalMart for supplies during a cloudy day. The $12 canopy solution made for an amusing afternoon. (Reminder to self: why try to save $15 on a canopy when you have no problem dropping $300 on an eyepiece?) Movie at night courtesy my neighbor's laptop. Around 10pm a head cold/sore throat I had been trying to delay for a week finally made head-way, so I decided to drive home to get a good nights sleep (which I didn't) in the hopes of recovering (which I haven't) what promise to be good conditions Friday and great conditions Saturday.
Friday
Sick during the day. Foolishly returned to the field at night. Spent way too much time drift aligning my LX200, forgetting the east/west movement required, instead adjusting in n/s for the southern star. At any rate, I eventually took 2 pictures piggyback, one of Cygnus the other later on of Orion. Hope to get those processed soon..very eager to see the results of my first ever piggyback. Viewed the usual suspects with the 12.5 and called it a night around 4.30am. I'll regret that choice later.
Saturday - limiting magnitude about 6.3
An absolutely beautiful day. Set up the Lumicon prominence filter for some great solar observing.
Spent the afternoon building a list of observing targets and fighting a worsening chest cold. The night was clear and cold.
Cygnus 6894 - found quickly & easily in my 17mm Nagler w/ OIII between 39 & 21. This is a cool little planetary, like a miniature ring nebula. Probably more deserving than the 3 stars the NSOG gives it.
Cygnus 7027 - another little planetary requiring an OIII to find. Midway between 58 & 62, away from Deneb. Took a bit to find it but it snapped in better when I put the OIII back on. Appearance little more than a smudged star. Neat to see once anyway. This one did merit the NSOG 3 star designation.
From here I started going to the Blue Flash planetary in Delphinus (6905). I started with the Dumbbell as a jump off point. Wow, the Dumbbell leapt into my eye, the clarity was awesome! (no filter). Before I could get to the Blue Flash Greg mentioned how Draco was setting, and as we had many targets in Draco I bailed and moved north. (Greg did view the Blue Flash but I didn't get a chance to view it. I'll have to ask him how it was).
Well most of my Draco targets were too low. So I moved into Cepheus and pulled in my first target, NGC 40, an interestingly structured planetary. It completes the square formed by gamma, 23 & 33. For the 2nd or 3rd time tonight, I only found it by moving to higher power from the start, abandoning my usual ritual of using my 35 as a finder and instead using my 17 as a finder. Once with the 17, it's easy enough to barlow. Anyway, NGC 40 became dubbed as the TIE fighter through the 25. I didn't quite see it, because I forgot which one the TIE fighter was (I just Googled an image of it).
Well around 10pm my legs gave out, a sign my body was failing after several nights of just 2 hours or so sleep. I was actually surprised I didn't get the flu or something worse. In case of emergency I bequeathed my eyepiece collection to Greg and went to bed.
Woke up around 12.30am absolutely freezing and discovered for the first time my tent was a summer tent, with non-closeable mesh windows on either end (the temp was in the low 40's and the wind was blowing across my head and chest). Unable to stand it I got up, packed up my gear and left by 3am. Here's the list of what I wanted to observe:
Camelopardalis - 1501 (blue planetary), 1502 (open cluster), 2403 (barred spiral)
Cepheus - IC 1396 (emission nebula spanning 3 degrees of sky - OIII), 7510 (open cluster), NGC 40
Cassiopeia - 278 (barred spiral), M103 (open cluster)
Andromeda - 891 (edge-on barred spiral), 7640 (tilted barred spiral), 7662 ("blue snowball" planetary)
Perseus - M76 (Little Dumbbell)
Cygnus - aside from what I did view, 6826 (blinking planetary), 7026 (planetary)
Delphinus - 6891 (planetary) and 6905 ("Blue Flash" nebula)
Draco - galaxies 3147, 4121, 5866 (M102), 5907, 6015, 6503 and 6543 ("Cat's Eye" planetary - viewed Wednesday)
Aries - 972 (oval galaxy)
Pisces - galaxies 7541, 128, 488 and 524
An ambitious list. There's always November.