04/27/2006 Another Night at the Eyepiece

Here we are on night #4 of TSP. This evening we heard Rich Jakiel give a talk called "Striking Ancient Skies", about ancient coins with an astronomical theme. I'm amazed at how many coins were minted that had pictures of stars, comets, the moon, etc. on them.
Anyway after the talk we all came out to clearing skies- Yippee! So right now I'm setting up for another great night of observing. I sure hope it lasts a while. Clear Sky Clock is predicting clouds later on.
I set up the 12" and also piggybacked the new 105mm Zenithstar refractor on top. First Light with the refractor was Sirius, which showed a very crisp star without noticeable fringe colors. I think I am going to like this scope.
After Sirius I tried slewing to Arcturus only to find the refractor is too heavy for the current setup. I really need to balance the scope before I continue using it as a piggyback, so back in the box it went, to patiently await another evening's observing.
10:00 p.m. - I realigned on Polaris and Spica, then synched on Arcturus just to improve the polar alignment's accuracy. Then I slewed over to the Leo Triplet, consisting of spiral galaxies M66 (NGC3627), M65 (NGC 3623), and NGC 3628. This is really an awesome part of the sky, all 3 galaxies can be viewed in a single wide-field eyepiece.
1:00 a.m. - it's still quite clear, although the humidity has been steadily climbing. Currently it's at 70%. I need to get the dew shield on, and I can smell the wetness. My paper logs are feeling damp.
I've been imaging for several hours. I couldn't seem to get the guider to work properly, so I'm just taking short 15 second exposures. Targets have included galaxies M65, M66, M104 (The Sombrero), and globular cluster M5. I hope some of them come out o.k. when I process them. It's gotten so wet that I'm going to put away the camera. Humidity has reached 74%. I'm certainly not used to that!
2:00 a.m. - clouds seemed to have taken over for a while, and the smell of rain was strong enough that I had pretty much decided to pack it in. However, it once again cleared up in most of the sky so I continued visual observing. Here's what I've observed;
-Antares (alpha Sco)
-Collander 399 "The Coathanger" asterism
-Caldwell 21 "Box Galaxy" (NGC 4449)
-NGC 4460 galaxy
-Struve 1645 a nice double near 4460
-NGC 4631 "The Whale" spiral galaxy (recommended by 'Mr. Galaxy' himself, Wayne Johnson from Tucson)
-NGC 4627 elliptical galaxy
-Barnard 228, a huge dark nebula
-Jupiter & his primary moons
-Deneb (alpha Cyg)
-Altair (alpha Aqu)
-Vega (alpha Lyr)
The reason I observed those 3 stars, which by the way make up the Summer Triangle, was that I had to resynch the telescope after the counterweights banged up against the forks.
-NGC 6823 open cluster
-NGC 6830 open cluster
-NGC 6834 open cluster
-NGC 6940 open cluster
-Albireo (beta Cyg), a stunning double star
-M57 The Ring Nebula
It's now about 4:30 a.m. The Milky Way here is quite dramatic, with more structure visible in the Sagittarius star cloud region than I've ever seen elsewhere. Unfortunately there is still a lot of moisture in the air, which although it helps steady the air, is also making the sky rather mushy. We're hoping to observe one last object to complete the "Eye On The Sky" observing program before the night is out.