I arrived in the SW lot about 5:15 pm Saturday evening, after driving
past frost and snow along the road on the last several miles up to
Fremont Peak. Peter Natscher was there and already set up with 20
inch Starmaster. Raymond Duval arrived shortly after I did and set
up Nexstar 8. Pete Santangeli came a bit later and set up 10 inch
f/4 Schmidt newt for imaging on an AP 900 mount, and a 78 mm
stellarvue Nighthawk refractor for visual sky touring during
exposures. That gave us a nice small group of observers on the
mountain top, and a range of apertures from 3, 8, 10, 14.5 to 20
inches.
As expected, it was cold. Temps were below freezing most of the
observing session, hovering around 28 most of night, with a brief
warming up to about 39 around 10 or 11 pm. Fortunately, there was
no real wind to speak of. Humidity was low enough that there was
also no extensive problems with dewing, just occasional fogging of
eyepieces near warm eyes and faces. I bundled up with a hat, gloves,
2 coats, snow pants,2 pairs of socks, and wool-lined boots. That
kept me warm throughout the night, and made it possible to thoroughly
enjoy some of the first clear skies I have seen with my 14.5 inch
scope since the sub-arcsecond viewing session up at Montebello
right before Thanksgiving.
The moon was already several days past new. The lunar crescent
hanging in the sky encouraged me to spend the early part of the night
looking at planets and bright objects. The Moon itself was
beautiful. The Rupes Cauchy region of the Sea of Tranquility was
well illuminated, with a huge black fault as prominent as the much
more famous Straight Wall that is located much further west. Two
pretty domes were visible south of Cauchy (Omega and Tau Cauchy),
along with a wide long rille to the that runs roughly parallel to
Rupes Cauchy further north. A great grouping of different kinds of
lunar objects (see chart 36 in Rukl).
After using my left eye for the moon, I used my right eye for a quick
star hop to comet T7 linear near M33. The comet was visble in the
9x50 finder scope as a small bright patch. In the telescope it
clearly showed a brighter nucleus and an asymmetric tail. I asked Ray
if he would like to take a look. He already knew the name and rough
position of the comet, even though he has only been observing a
couple of months. Ray is going through lots of objects for the first
time with the help of Turn Left at Orion. This was one of the books I
had also started with, and has an excellent selection of both
objects, descriptions, and background information. Shortly
afterwards, Ray was hunting M1, one of the Messier objects that
really actually looks sort of like a comet. It was fun to go back
and forth between a current comet in the sky, and the first object
that Messier had seen while comet hunting that inspired him to
begin a list of other nebulous objects in the sky.
After the comet and M1 I stopped in briefly at M103, on open cluster
in Cas that I had recently heard described as resembling a Christmas
Tree cluster. Sure enough the stars are are laid out in a nice
triangular shape, with a brighter one at the top and some ornaments
hanging on the side. I hadn't looked at this in years, but will
make a habit of stopping back again around the holidays.
Mars was hanging bright in the sky, now nearly four months past
opposition. I swung over to take a look, and could still see some
detail on the shrinking disc. I made a sketch but suspect this will
be the last of the large series I started way back in May, when I
first saw Mars rising in the East near the end of an observing
session up at Henry Coe. At nearly the same time I was sketching
Mars at Fremont Peak, the big radio telescope at Stanford was
scanning the surface of Mars trying to detect any signal from Beagle
2. After reading so much about Mars over the summer, I have really
been looking forward to the new exploratory missions from both Europe
and the US. It looks grim now for Beagle2, but I am keeping my
fingers crossed for the two US probes arriving in January.
With the moon still casting obvious shadows throughout the parking
lot, I decided to take a look at other bright targets. Saturn was
absolutely beautiful last night at magnifications up to 450x The
crepe ring was very obvious all around the planet, with lots of other
structure and brightening in the A and B rings. Beautiful banding
was also visible on globe. While soaking in the views, I was
surprised to see two dark ears poking out behind the planet where
Saturn's edge was superimposed over the ring behind it. Each small
black ear almost identical in size. While looking at this, I thought
it must be the shadow of the planet projected on the rings. However,
a shadow could only produce symmetric black ears if Saturn was very
near opposition. I subsequently checked Karkoschka's handy atlas,
and sure enough Saturn last night was only a few days away from its
opposition on December 31st, 2003. I have previously watched the
shadows of Jupiter's moons switch from the preceeding to following
side of the tiny moons as Earth caught up with and passed the king
of planets near opposition
(http://www.observers.org/reports/2000.11.27.html). Saturn's rings
make it possible to see a similar effect with the shadow of an entire
planet. The two symmetric black ears were an interesting bonus to a
wonderful view. I suspect that by the time that I get a chance to
look again, the shadow on the following side will start to grow as
the earth pulls away from Saturn after opposition.
(for anyone who wants to see an image of the symmetric black ears
effect, there happened to be a post today by someone on the AP-user
Yahoo group who imaged Saturn imaged last night with an 8 inch F/15
AP. The views through both the 14.5 inch and 20 inch starmaster last
night at Fremont Peak, were actually somewhat sharper than what was
recorded in the image, but it gives you some idea of the detail
visible in moments of good seeing last night , and the two black
ears. Unfortunately, you may have to joint the yahoo group to see
the file
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ap-ug/files/17Saturn12-27-03.jpg )
Some much higher resolution images can also be seen on Damian Peach's
public web site, covering the changing appearance of Saturn and its
ring shadows during the 2002 and 2003 opposition:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/damian.peach/sat_02.htm
Ray was also hunting the Eskimo nebula (NGC 2392) in Gemini last
night, located not too far away from Saturn. We played with
different eyepieces and barlows in the Nexstar to vary the
magnification, and then compared views as we stepped up in aperture.
In the 8 inch Nexstar, the central star and planetary nebula was
obvious, and an OIII filter and high magnification brought out hints
of an inner shell with averted vision.
In the 14.5 inch starmaster, some inner ring structure was clearly
visible without an OIII filter, but usually looked discontinuous,
with brightest part constantly visible, and the rest coming and going
with seeing. Adding the OIII made it obvious there was a continuous
inner shell, that could now be easily held constantly with direct
vision. When we looked through Peter's 20 inch later in night, it
was possible to hold the continuous ring easily without the OIII
filter. Adding the OIII still helped (more than a lumicon UHC),
mostly making the inner shell brighter and fatter. The improvement
was not as big as in the 14.5 inch however, because the 20 inch
already collected enough light to show most of the inner shell even
in the unfiltered view. We later hunted this again in Peter's 80 mm
Nighthawk. The difference between the nebula and nearby field stars
was clear, but the nebula obviously did not show the the structure
visible in the larger scopes. It was fun to play with a range of
apertures, eyepieces, and filters on a single object. Thanks to
everyone for the comparisons.
The moon was now low enough, and Orion was high enough, that I spent
the rest of the night going through an old Alan MacRobert tour of the
belt and sword of winter's best constellation (SkyTel January 1998).
I usually check out the great Orion nebula at least once every night
I set up in the winter. M42 is so spectacular that it is easy to
overlook all the other cool stuff nearby. I had a very enjoyable
time going through a nice set of double and multiple stars, emission
and reflection nebula, dark nebula, and clusters from the brilliant
belt star zeta Ori to the very interesting NGC 1999 nebula a the
bottom of the sword. MacRobert includes lots of interesting
information on unusual features of the stars themselves, including
spectra, distances, orbits, and enough diagrams that it was possible
to hop along easily through a huge range of objects (multiple stars
including zeta Ori, three nearby doubles, sigma Ori, struve 761, the
trapezium, iota Ori, Struve 747; unusual variables like KX, V901, and
V359 Ori; clusters like 1981; and lots of reflection, emission, and
dark nebula including IC431, IC432, NGC 2024 ( flame nebula),
NGC2023, IC435, IC434, the horsehead, NGC 1973, 1975, and 1977, M43,
M42, and NGC1999. Too bad so much of this stuff is overshadowed by
its brilliant neighbor. M43 would be a much more popular object in
its own right if it wasn't right next door to M42. NGC1999 was the
last thing on the tour, but an interesting mix of nebulosity
surrounding a star, and an obvious dark patch on one side. See
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/stellar/scenes/object_e/ngc1999.htm
for both an amateur and hubble telescope view of this very interesting region.
I had looked at many of these Orion objects before, mostly with a 7
inch Starmaster in a rush of excitement and discovery doing the
Messier and Herschel 400 lists when I first got started with
astronomy. It was great fun to go back and look again with the
larger 14.5 inch scope. I also find I am learning more about the
objects themselves on subsequent visits, rather than just enjoying
the views. MacRobert is an excellent writer for bringing together
both the science and beauty of the objects. I have also been picking
up interesting astrophysical details about many eyepiece objects in
the recently published book, Concise Catalog of Deep Sky Objects by
W.H. Finlay. Finlay summarizes, ages, distances, sizes, galaxy
position, and relevant scientific details from the research
literature for 520 deep sky objects, including the entire Messier
Catalog, the Herschel 400, and the RASC's finest 110 NGC objects. In
his sections on many of the things I looked at last night, Finlay
points out that the huge concentration of emission nebula, gas, dust,
and new star clusters in the Orion/Monoceris region are part of an
enormous molecular gas cloud that is positioned about 500 light
years south of the disk of the Milky Way. The size, position, and
properties of the cloud suggest it was likely produced by recent
infall of a gargantuan gas clouds into the plane of our galaxy from
below. Interestingly, the current issue of Scientific American has
a long article on how our galaxy was likely built (and is still
evolving) by the continual accumulation of infalling clouds of
gas, dust, and nearby galaxies. The visual delights in Orion
provide a great way to actually see the results of this process in
the eyepiece. I learn something new almost every time I come back to
this region with a telescope, each visit helping reveal new parts of
a much larger picture of the universe.
By midnight, bands of clouds were starting to fill the western sky up
to 45 degrees or so of altitude. Pete had torn down, and soon found
that his car battery had been completely drained while providing
power for his dew heaters and mount during the night. Ray came to the
rescue with the cables from a telescope mount, and Pete got started
before having to attempt any major surgery of swapping batteries in
and out of his car. The rest of us also packed up soon after, after
nearly 6 hours of observing.
Roads were frosty and slick in parts on the way down the mountain.
One patch sparkled brightly with tiny ice crystals against the dark
road, reminding me of of some of the beautiful sights I had seen in
the eyepiece earlier in the night. I have never driven more slowly
or carefully down from Fremont Peak, but was very happy I decided to
make the observing trip, despite the cold.
Happy new year, and best wishes to both new and old observers in 2004.
David Kingsley
