Well, it has been some time since I have blogged here, Some of that has been the rather poor observing conditions we had in February and March, but some of the reason is I just got plain lazy. Well I am going to pay for that as I have a couple of star parties to catch you up on.
The first I want to tell you about is the Texas Star Party held April 15th through 22nd. I departed for this year's TSP on Saturday with a planned stop over at the North Llano River RV Park in Junction Texas. This was about a six hour drive and left me a four hour drive on Sunday. This looked like it would worked out perfectly as the gates at the Prude Ranch would not open until noon, and I would be able to get a good night sleep. Well, that was before a storm front blew through that night with 40 mph wind gusts that kept up until the wee hours of the morning. In reality, I only got a few few hours of sleep before sunrise. Sunday would prove to be a long day.Sunday brought more wind as I headed west towards Fort Davis, however, the skies took on that royal blue color that comes as the air dries. The clouds were gone and it was looking like a good start to the week.
I arrived at the ranch around 1pm and went through their efficient registration process. I made my way up to the upper observing field and found a spot for my tent on the south-east side. With my tent and scope all set up, I sat back and relaxed with a cold malt beverage.Sunset was not until after 8 o'clock and so it gave me some time to plan the night's observing run. The plan was to concentrate on John Wagoner's TSP 2012 list and if possible, to complete it before turning in.
The really cool thing this time at TSP was the fact that I had my laptop connected directly to my Celestron scope through a USB/serial adapter. This allowed my to select the object in Skytools and the scope would automatically slew to it. The scope's goto functioned flawlessly. Kudos to Celestron for such a great product!
So, I progressed with the list pretty efficiently completing all but the last four objects before midnight. The remaining four objects were all globular clusters in Ophiuchus. They would not be above the horizon until after 1:30. So, I had some time to kill. Time for one of those famous brisket burritos at the snack hut operated by the ranch. One of these would give me the necessary energy to push through the next two hours. The globs finally made their appearance and I shut down the scope at 2AM with 34 objects logged. Showpieces of the night were: M13, M82, M90, and M100. Here is M90 from the DSS database.
With temperatures dropping into the low thirties, I crawled into my sleeping bag thankful that I had brought my Canadian Winter sleeping bag.
Monday morning came with crisp cool air. I waited until the sun was above the local horizon before I ventured outside. The day quickly warmed up to a comfortable low 70's with another cloudless royal blue sky.
After a hearty Prude Ranch lunch, I wandered over to the activity hall where the TSP was conducting their registration. As usual, John Wagoner was perched outside the door to hand out pins to the successful candidates who had completed the observation lists. I gave John some good humor trouble for including objects with such a late rise time, complaining that he kept me up too late. He smiled a little devilish smile and offered a sarcastic apology. Pin in hand, I completed the registration process and headed back to my tent to try and get some shut eye.
Monday night remained clear, but not so cold as the previous night. With the TSP 2012 list completed, I concentrated on making progress on my Herschel 400 list. I worked on the faint fuzzies of UMa, CVn, Com, Leo and Vir. The night ended shortly after 1AM with another 33 objects logged.The best view of the night was NGC 4565. This is a beautiful edge on galaxy in Comma Bernenices. Here is the DSS image and my eyepiece impression:
Sirius Plössl 40mm, 51x
Large, edge on, 15' long, definite brightening towards non-stellar core.
Smart Astronomy EF 16, 127x
Very nice, fills up over half fov (>14'), nucleus is non-stellar, bright halo, visible dark lane along the disc.
I will save the remainder of the week for the next edition of my blog. Check back next week!
Clear skies
rw
