I thought I'd share my great time out last night with my new local astro
group, here in southern Oregon. They're a small group, about 10-15 show
up at observing meetings, 70 members total. They called the Southern
Oregon Skywatchers. The summer sky up here is unbelievable when it's
clear. Last night was like that. What a change from our crummy winter.
I took my Starmaster 20" out on my first astro-club meeting with the
Southern Oregon Skywatchers astronomy club last night. They are the
Medford area's only club--and the only one in southern Oregon, too. The
star party met 30 miles north of the Medford/Rogue River valley at
Stewart State Park on Lost Creek Lake. The lake is at 1700 ft. altitude.
This neighboring valley is surrounded by 5,000 ft. heavily wooded
mountains and is far enough north of Medford to block most of its light
dome--only 45 minutes away. The highway drive (Rt. 62) north along the
Rogue River to get there is safe and relaxing. Upon arrival to the state
park campsite area, there were ten other SOS club members with an array
of small refractors, homemade newtonians, mid-sized dobs and an 11" LX
already set up in the central grassy area. When it got around that I had
a 20" dob, everyone wanted to help me unload and set it up even though
my 20" Starmaster is really easy to setup alone.
During the sunset, SOS gave a presentation with a computer astronomy
atlas program (MegaStar) via a laptop and projector. This was 45 min. in
length of "How the Universe was Born", at the camp grounds' outdoor
movie screen. Their were about 60 campers seated there to watch. The air
quality along Stewart State Park at Lost Creek Lake was refreshing and
cooler than the 88 degrees I had just left in Medford. We started off by
showing the big Messier stuff to the general public right after the
show, at 10:30 pm--the sun sets so late in June up here at 42 deg. north
latitude. We couldn't get started observing until after 10:30pm. But,
it's so much fun to get the kids to climb my 6' ladder to get at the
20"ers' eyepiece. But when they finally do, it's WoW! By 11:30, all
campers had seen many sky objects are were retiring to their own
campsites. At last, the 10 of us could now enjoy the very transparent
and dark skies above for ourselves. We knew we would only have a good
2-1/2 hours of deep sky observing for the bright last quarter moon would
rear its head by 1:30 am above the mountains to the east.
So, by 11 pm, we were looking up seeing 6.8-7.0 mag. stars naked eye
with a very bright milky way (I could see the few stars between Vega and
Epsilon Lyra as a test for that). It really feels good to be out under
thousands of stars in the summer. A few of the spring globulars were
easily visible naked eye (M3, M13, M5).
My evening's observing list included:
M51, Whirlpool Galaxy (CanesV), face-on prominent spiral arms and lanes
with knots, photographic appearance, detail within the spiral arms easy.
M97, the Owl Nebula (UMa), its central star and two eyes are visible.
M101 (UMa), very large spiral with arm and dark matter structure easy to
see. Nearly filled my 19mm Panoptic field of view.
NGC 4565 (CorB), nice dark lane running further out from the nucleus
than I could remember with the 14.5".
NGC 5660, 5676, 5673 (Bootes), galaxy group, face-on and eliptical
galaxies within one view.
M57 (Lyra), with 20" aperture and a dark sky, its blueness really stands
out (like a neon sign) and the surounding 14 mag. stars are easy,
central star blinking in and out of view
with 'direct vision'.
NGC 6543 (Draco), Cat's Eye Nebula, at 287x (7.5mm Tak LE), the bright
blue/purple planetary shows its two overlapping oval lobes and ring
detail along with the inner darker
area surrounding the bright central star.
M27 (Vulpecula), the large planetary shows 15 or more stars within its
nebulosity and fills the view in my 15mm Panoptic. An O3 filter brings
out the real 'oval' shape to the nebula.
NGC 6888 (Cygnus) Bubble Nebula, nice structure in an arced gaseous ring
with knots all along its length. 19mm Panoptic and UHC filter.
NGC 6960/6995 (Cygnus) theVeil Nebula, filamentary detail entire length.
20" aperture keeps image bright despite 2" UHC filter in the 35mm
Panoptic/Paracorr.
The 20" Starmaster is a great choice for me to have as my sole
telescope, currently. It's portable, easy to set up and take down in the
dark, and shows deep sky objects very well.
Peter Natscher
Souther Oregon Skywatchers
Medford, Oregon