Christmas

    I’m sure you were all aware of the Solar eclipse that took place Christmas morning. I was extremely thankful that we had a clear sky. This was the first solar eclipse that I planned to watch since I became interested in astronomy and I found the experience to be very exciting both personally but also from sharing it with others. I was glad that Astronomy magazine supplied eclipse glasses. I was able to interest my daughter Abby in taking an occasional view. Abby and I were the first to see the outer rim of the moon start to traverse it’s way onto the sun. We then poked holes in paper to watch the eclipse progress as it cast it shadowed light on various surfaces.

    Since the sky looked like it would be clear for a while, I set up my scope on the deck to let it cool down in the cold air. While it was cooling down, I walked over to my neighbor’s house to wish them a Merry Christmas and to have them look through the extra pair of glasses from the magazine. I get the biggest kick out of the exclamations of people who have never seen astronomical events. Even the teenager next store thought it was cool.

    By now my scope had cooled down sufficiently as the eclipse approached maximum. I put my solar filter on the front of the scope saw 2 groupings of sun spots hanging below the edge of the moon. I managed to take about 20 pictures with color slide film that I hope to share at our next meeting (Mark Christensen also should have some shots for viewing as well.) I was glad to have my nephew and my Dad stop in to take a look at through the scope! It was fun to watch their reactions both to the eclipse and magnified views of the sunspots.

    My neighbor then stopped over to look through the scope and again was thrilled to see the amazing sights offered. I was glad that Steve noticed another grouping of sun spots emerging from under the disc of the moon. We kept taking turns as the spots emerged to show a distinctive shape of a Klingon bird of prey. I kept watching and more of the group emerged. My Dad and Nephew headed to another home with a pair of glasses in hand. Another family was able to view the eclipse. 

    I’m glad I was able to satisfy my personal interest in the eclipse but was even more gratified that 12 other people got to see it with my help. Astronomy has so many thrills to offer the public. On that Christmas day, the last Christmas eclipse till the 24th century, I was grateful to show off another of the amazing beauties of the universe we live in.

Experiencing the Dark Sky in Galena, Illinois

Thanksgiving

    I had the rare pleasure of vacationing for four days in Galena, Illinois over the Thanksgiving holiday in 1999. I must say that astronomically speaking, the experience surpassed all my expectations. My family along with my wife Valaree’s parents and brother’s family rented a house in the Galena Territory. That area of our state is so beautiful with rolling hills and paths to walk by day. Of course, the highlight for me was the night!

    I haven’t had many extreme dark night experiences since I have started gazing at the heavens. In fact I have only experienced one dark sky in Connecticut this August. But that was nothing compared to the absolute dark that the Galena Territory offers. It was so dark that I have to admit I was spooked the first night I went out. I set up the telescope just 20 yards from the house we were renting. As I stepped out from the lighted indoors I you could not see the scope! I had to shine my red flashlight just for my family members to find me. Adding to the spookiness was the fact that houses were acres apart which gives this rural mindset some imaginative stirrings in the brush near the house. Of course hearing the coyotes howl at one another was fantastic as well.

    Surprising to me, my biggest thrill was from the whole experience was seeing the Milky Way appear before my light stained eyes in less than a minute! That was my most memorable of many sights I had in the two nights I spent observing. 

    Ranking second was the absolutely spectacular views I got of Jupiter and Saturn. The second night was simply transparent. I could easily see 6 bands on Jupiter, 5 of which stayed in view without winking away. I also got a thrill from seeing the Great Red Spot so clearly! Saturn showed off it’s rings as impressively as I had ever seen. Val and I enjoyed the dark band around the planet itself. The only time I had seen this band was a picture that the Hubble telescope had taken. We quick counted 7 moons around the ringed planet as well. 

    I discarded the computer on the scope to manually find a few objects for my FVAS Messier Hunter binder. Before I bought the telescope I had spent months memorizing star charts and have a decent perception of the constellations. But I’ve been basically too lazy and strapped for time to not use the computer goto controls. This was my first time manually hunting other than when I has my 60mm refractor. I really enjoyed the search more than I had thought I would. I set out to find the 3 open clusters in Auriga which were fairly easy to find. Given the dark skies, the clusters showed up very clear in my finder scope. I had never seen them through it before. I was amazed at how 3 dimensional they appeared. They easily yielded two to three times as many stars as I could see from my back yard. I almost don’t want to see them from here again. The image of M38 is engrained in my mind even as I write this days later.

    I managed to snap some pictures of the planets and even branched out to take some daytime photography. The natural beauty of Galena is remarkable is so many aspects. I hope to share the pictures at out December meeting. If you haven’t had the opportunity to spend a night in Galena or some other very dark sky you should make some plans to. I have already blocked out 4 days to do so there next summer. I’m glad to share this dark experience with you and I hope I have painted an adequate picture!

Galaxy Hopping, May 27, 2003

Late in the Spring offers a wonderful chance to galaxy hop. The constellations of Leo, Virgo & Coma Bernices are full of Messier Catalog galaxies. I had never taken the time to go through these constellations systematically. My original plan was to star hop to all of them but with my bad back I thought I should use the computer on my 10" Schmidt-Cassegrain.

I set up in the driveway while it was still light out. Across the street, my neighbor's lights were on so I parked my van diagonally across the driveway to block some of the light. I then rolled out my scope on my homemade casterized sled. I am thankful for that sled each time I observe!

At about 9:30, I came out to start the observing session. My observing tools included my Wil Tirion Cambridge Star atlas, an Orion red flashlight, a 22mm Tele Vue Panoptic, and a couple of sheets of paper for notes. The atlas is nice but it now serves me better as I carefully cut out all the pages and put them in sheet protectors inside a three hole binder. It makes flipping through the charts much easier than trying to keep a book open.

Before I started out my official session, I had made up my mind to view the Sombrero Galaxy, or M104, since Jeff Benuzzi has inspired me to see it again. I plugged my eyepiece and used to GoTo feature. Being that there was still a great deal of localized light pollution and my eyes were not dark adapted, it was still a very pleasant to see. I thought I could see the dust lane through this edge on galaxy. I decided to put in my Lumicon Deep Sky Filter. The dust lane did seem to be more noticeable. In retrospect, I should have finished the night with this too as it would have passed out of the Fox Valley glare and my eyes would have been dark adapted too.

Starting out in Leo

Since Leo was closer to the horizon, I thought I ought to check that out first. Since I was already aligned on Denebola, the tail of Leo, I would start out with M65 and M66 which is just south of the Lion's grounded hind legs. Knowing that M66 and M65 were very close together I hoped to be able to see them in the same field of view. Sure enough I could. M66 had a brighter core than M65. It is so cool to see 2 galaxies together.

Seeing that Jupiter would be setting soon, I wanted to steal a quick glimpse before it got into the twinkle zone of the horizon. The bands were amazingly sharp! Sharper than I can recall for some time!

Back in Leo, I now cruised back over to Leo and the elliptical galaxy of M105. It was as bright to me as M66 was. M95 lies very near to M105 but was not as bright. That should not be surprising since it is a SBb designation meaning spiral with loose arms. For someone hair brained reason, I skipped M96 which is part of the Leo of the trio of galaxies there!

Coma Berenices and Virgo

I decided to move in a North to South manner to view the galaxies in what is known as the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. M100 was a very nice sight as I could begin to make out a spiral shape! That was kind of exciting. M100 does indeed have very large spiral arms. From there I moved south west to M98. M98 was just a smudge. I can see why Charles Messier would want to catalog this type of an object because it could easily be mistaken for a comet in his scope. M98 is a Sb which means a spiral armed galaxy. Turns out this is a somewhat tilted from our perspective here on earth. At this time the neighbor's turned out their lights having seen me outside which was nice of them. It got dark in a hurry after that. I estimate getting a magnitude better definition as a result. On to M99 which was another smudge. M99 is a face on spiral with wide arms. From there M86 and M84 were smudges. M86 could be a lenticular galaxy which means it is a spiral without the spiral structure. M87 turned out to be a fairly cool site as it has some apparent companion dwarf companions with one being very apparent to me.

At this point I was beginning to get as dark adapted as I could from my driveway. M58 was the next in line and appeared to me to be a dim globular. It turns out to be another Sc type. From there I got a nice surprise to get both M59 and M60 in the same field of view. Both of these are elliptical galaxies. I learned a very important observing trick with these two. As I used the computer to slew the two into a better view, I realized that the slewing motion was making instant averted vision for both. To me it seems rather than looking just off the object that slewing give many rapid versions of averted vision. It just seems to bring out more detail. Please let me know if this is the case with you.

By now you are getting the picture that the Virgo galaxies will pretty much look similar to the descriptions I have provided already. So, here are some more abbreviated highlights:

M88 - Bigger than the others with a bright core, Sb
M90 - Core seemed to be a dim star, Sb
M91 - Barely even a smudge, SBb
M85 - This was a cool experience. If you have a computerized scope, you need to press go while looking into the eyepiece. It is fascinating to watch stars fly by till your object snaps into view. M85 showed a hint of another object which turned out to be NGC4394. I plan on spending time on this one at a dark site.
M64 - Good object, bigger and brighter than the others
M53 - Offers a nice break from galaxies with this globular cluster. Was able to resolve some stars in this cluster. Had to take out the Deep Sky Filter first.

Departing to Ursa Major

On the way to Ursa Major I stopped by M3 in Canes Venatici. M3 is one of the best Globulars! It was nice to get something with a lot of detail. I estimate being able to resolve about 70 stars in it. Unfortunately I caught a car's headlights which hurt my night vision some. Then I had to stop by for believe it or not, my first telescopic look at M51. It's crazy to have never looked at this before. I was very surprised to see this Face on Spiral's irregular galactic companion NGC5195. I didn't think it would be as bright as it turned out to be. I want to spend more time on these guys next time. Next was the complete telescopic dud of M101 which is a large face on spiral which is nearly as large as the full moon. It is dim because it surface brightness is spread out over such a large area. I didn't see anything but a vague core.

Finishing Up

I was glad to see Scorpius rising and decided to attempt to see M4 through the Fox Valley murk. It was a complete dud. I would have taken some time in Hercules but it was mostly covered by my house. I ended up the night by observing the double star Kappa Hercules which is recommended in the Field Guide to Double Star Observing. It was a nice way to end the night with the stars being close to each other in magnitude. One appeared to be a pale yellow while the other had a hint of blue.

It was a great night of observing and I only regret that I couldn't share it with one of my observing companions. Take a night a surf the galaxies while you still have time!

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