I took this picture a little while ago. Those are not clouds - they are "Star Clouds" in the Milky Way. More details below.
This will be my final post from the Texas Star Party. There really isn't any good way for me to express how fantastic this vacation has been for me. Six nights out of seven had excellent observing, meeting new friends, attending interesting lectures, being surrounded by every type of telescope imaginable, and just generally being immersed into all-around amateur astronomy turned out to be a great way to spend a week. The only negative part for me was being away from my beautiful wife and kids - I miss them tremendously. But after I catch a few hours of sleep, I'll be on the road back home to them.
Today we turned in our lists and received our third observing award pin. Working on a list of objects with a goal of completing them to earn an award is a good way to discover new objects and keep yourself focused (no pun intended) at the eyepiece. The pins are nicely done and a lot of TSP attendees wear them proudly on their caps. Some of these folks are wearing some heavy caps with all the pins they have!
The main lecture this evening was "The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy" by Fulvio Melia. Dr. Melia, who is a University of Arizona professor, was an excellent speaker and his talk was well done. I was pleased to hear him acknowledge a few areas where current science does not have all the answers - so many scientists seem to be overly confident in their theories. After the talk I was able to get Fulvio to sign my copy of his book. The door prizes came next and there were a ton of prizes. Wayne won a set of the same brick things that Larry won yesterday, which we all found rather humorous since neither one of them is able to use them and they are quite heavy. I actually won a prize too, I received a T-shirt, pen, screwdriver, and small red flashlight.
The raffle finished up a little before 10:00 p.m. and we headed up to the upper field for our last night of observing. We've had the scopes set up at the SW corner of the field for the whole week. The sky was so clear tonight and although it was very cold (not much above freezing), the wind was not there so it was a great night for observing. I observed the following:
-Polaris (alpha Ursae Min)
-Arcturus (alpha Boo)
-M86 elliptical galaxy (NGC 4406)
-M84 elliptical galaxy (NGC 4374)
-NGC 4402 spiral galaxy
-NGC 4387 elliptical galaxy
-NGC 4388 spiral galaxy
-NGC 2903 spiral galaxy
-and of course, the last object observed before telescope take-down was one of my favorites, the globular cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139).
This is a bit of a short list. I spent some of the time this evening talking with people, like my new friend Rich Jakiel, and Dean. Also, I imaged NGC 2903 in the CCD but since it was low in the West my scope was having trouble tracking the R.A. so it didn't come out too well.
I also spent some time taking various piggyback photos using my digital camera. The attached picture shows (along with the front end of my scope and the horizon on the left) the Sagittarius region of the Milky Way galaxy. I thought it was fitting after Dr. Melia's talk to snap a picture of the area of the Milky Way that contains the "center", where a supermassive black hole resides. Unfortunately you can't see the black hole in my picture, but if you look carefully, you can see about 17 of Charles Messier's famous "M-objects" including such great ones as the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Swan Nebula (M17) and the Trifid (M20). Even Pluto is in this picture, but you won't be able to find it.
It was hard to call it quits tonight, especially with such a wonderful sky above, but there's a long drive ahead tomorrow. All in all, it was really a great TSP!
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