Vern’s Weblog

Last evening 14 of us in the Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins astronomy clubs met at Crow Valley Campground north of Briggsdale, CO for a very enjoyable night under dark skies. Conditions were very good — one of those evening we all hope for but only rarely experience. Excellent transparency, a cloudless sky, no wind, and even fairly warm temperatures for this time of year. Temperatures were in high 40s and 50s early in the evening so most of us were in light jackets until 9 or 10. Turbulence was only fair, about 5/10 most of the evening. It got a bit frosty around 4 am with temperatures in the low 20s. In Colorado you soon learn to bring your cold weather gear along year round, so it wasn’t a problem for most.

I spent most of the evening checking off spring objects in Ursa Major and Canes Venatici. I held off imaging until just before 4 so I could catch Jupiter’s red spot and comet Lovejoy. I tried for 96P Machholz as well, but it was behind the trees to the east.

I managed to get in some practice shooting the crescent moon at dawn in preparation for tomorrow morning and Tuesday evening this week. The shot above was not the best. I had better composition in some earlier shots which I lost due to an incorrect setting in my focusing software — it deleted all but the last image taken. In early shots the moon was lower and the wind mill wasn’t against the tree in the background. Darn… It makes a fairly nice desktop wall paper though, despite the obvious flaws. Here is a 1280×1024 version.

A group of us from astronomy clubs in Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins met this weekend at Crow Valley Campground just north of Briggsdale, CO in the Pawnee National Grasslands. Due to snow and cloudy weather it was the first night since last October we were able to enjoy some truly dark skies.

It was a fabulous night! The sky was clear all night, turbulence was 6/10, no wind, the transparency was excellent, and humidity was low. We were in shirt sleeves until about 8pm (temperature in high 50s) and we didn’t have to put on much winter gear until the temperature dipped to freezing around 1 am.

I succombed to Messier madness for the first time. I cheated and used the Nexstar 11 “goto” to locate most of them. Except for M74 and M55 all 109 objects were trivial to locate. The scope performed flawlessly and put most objects within the middle 1/3 of a 30 arc-min field. Only a few were off a half a field — and it did it all night long without even a resync. I’ve recently had problems with “goto” accuracy. A few days ago I located a loose connector going to the altitude sensor micro-switch .

While waiting for some Messier objects to rise in the early morning, we had time to visit some favorites like the Veil nebula, blue snow ball, blinking planetary, NGC 4565, ghost of Jupiter, and many others. Saturn was excellent and even Jupiter was looking good in the steady air despite being low in Sagitarius.

I didn’t try for the 110th object, M30. We had a tough time locating globular M55 shortly after 6. M30 wasn’t due to rise for another 20 minutes. I’ve read that M30 is extremely difficult, and maybe impossible to locate unless the date and everything are just right if you are north of 35 degrees latitutde.

Only downside was that I had planned on doing a couple comets and the Pluto occulation with the Stellacam2. Unfortunately, the driver for the video card I use crashed the notebook and removed all the other video drivers in the process. The video card is going to be reassigned to the trash shortly.

Last evening I met up with some members of the local astronomy clubs in Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins, Coloarado at Crow Valley Campground near Briggsdale. It was quite cold, around 3 °F, no wind, clear sky, turbulence 7/10, and fantastic transparency. Unfortunately, I forgot my counterweight, dew shield, and dew heater. Lucky for me Dan was there and let me use his catalytic heater to clear off the corrector plate so I was able to do some imaging. It was pretty frustrating though as the clutches would slip now and then from the unbalanced load.

Compare this to one I took on Jan 29 — excellent transparency makes a difference!

Last evening I met up with fellow amateur astronomers at the Crow Valley Campground near Briggsdale, CO. It was quite cloudy when I arrived about half an hour after sunset. We spent a couple hours talking about good times last summer and making plans for possible star party trips to the Texas Star Party, northwestern Nebraska, Mt. Evans, CU Mountain Observatory, and our favorite, Fox Park, Wyo. The sky cleared shortly after 8pm. It was fairly cold, around 8 degrees F, but fortunately very little wind.

I set up the 300D to take some time exposures, but was quite dismayed when I remembered that the batteries were still in the charger back at home! Fortuanately, I had brought along the Stellacam2 so I set it up on the Celestron Nexstar11 with a 0.33 focal reducer. I was quite pleased to discover that I could set the gain very high (12/14) and still not have much background noise. Normally I can only set to about 8 or 9/14.

Around 00:30 I took this image of M51 and its companion to the north NGC 5195.

At the same time I was imaging this, my friend Gary was looking at it in his 30 inch dob nearby. It was really cool to compare the views. M51 is an awesome object in his 30 inch. The spiral arms are absolutely amazing to trace and dark lane extending below NGC 5195 is very apparent. The image on the notebook from the Stellacam2 is pretty stunning as well. The image is much noisier, but the same structures can be seen. Still though, it just can’t compare to the view through a large scope at dark site.