Sky this Week

Friday evening a few of us from the Longmont Astronomy club drove up to Fox Park, WY to enjoy a weekend under dark, transparent skies at 9100 ft elevation. The Fox Park observing field is the site of the annual Weekend Under the Stars (WUTS) star party hosted by the Cheyenne and Laramie Astronomy clubs. There are no facilities, other than open space and trees, so its dry camping only.

I arrived around 5:30 pm to have time to set up my scope and tent. John had arrived the night before and was already set up. Gary was up on a tall ladder putting the cage on his 30″ dob. It was quite pleasant, clear blue skies, about 70 deg F, with just a few clouds on the western horizon. Unfortunately, the mosquitos were numerous and hungry so we all had to put on bug spray and wear jackets and caps. Nearby areas had lots of standing water yet, spring snows probably melted only a few ago weeks making excellent breeding grounds for the pesky critters.  About 20 minutes after sunset, around 9 pm, the temperature had dropped quickly into the low 50s and mosquitos weren’t a problem the rest of the evening.

The first object for the evening was the very young crescent moon. John spotted it first with binoculars a minute or two past 9 pm, just above the trees and a low cloud bank. I was able to see it naked eye as soon as I lowered the binoculars.  It took a few minutes to locate in my scope and set up the camera.  I managed to get off a few shots (see last nights post) before the cloud bank to the west covered it over.

We all took a few quick looks at Venus. The quarter crescent was quite sharp and clear. It will be fun to watch as the crescent grows thinner and larger over the next weeks before it disappears near the end of July.

Jupiter was great to view, turbulence was quite good  7/10 Pickering at times but then would change to maybe 5/10 with minutes. The bands were sharp and festoons very apparent.  I opted to image Jupiter the next night so I could capture the GRS crossing (turned out to be a mistake, the turbulence was not good the next night).  I wanted to concentrate instead on logging some galaxies in Virgo and Coma Berenices before they get too low to view this season.

Fox Park is a quite dark site, one that you have to experience to really appreciate.  Clouds look like dark black ink blots, there is no light pollution to illuminate them.  The twilight in the west seems to last longer than normal. Even places we think of as dark the twilight glow is not very apparent an hour and 15 minutes after sunset. Not at Fox Park, it was so dark the glow was very noticable until the end of astronomical twilight, about 10:50 pm.

Around 1:30 I stopped logging galaxies for a few minutes and set up the Xti camera on the counter balance rail. I had forgotten to pack my good camera mount for the top rail. Here is a quick 30 second exposure of a favorite summertime pastime, the constellation Sagittarius. There is much to explore within its borders.

Not a great shot, I carefully focused the camera and then broke the rules adjusting balance by sliding it along the rail, I apparently jiggled the lens as stars weren’t sharp when I processed it.  (Standard Xti 8-55 mm  lens at 24 mm, ISO 1600, and 30 second exposure. Cropped and enhanced with Photoshop Elements2).

I spent the rest of the night on Gary’s ladder looking through his 30 inch dob at the Ring Nebula, the Trifid, both Veils, the Lagoon, the Swan, the Dumbbell, and many, many others. So many great objects, so little time!  We put the scope covers on about 3:30 am to get a few hours of sleep.

I got up around 9 am as it got a bit warm in the tent.  Beautiful blue sky and sunshine overhead but there were dark clouds in the west. By 1 pm there was wind, lightning, rain, and some small hail.  The clouds hung around past sunset. I got a few images of the two day old moon even though the sky was about 80% overcast. Around 11 pm it cleared off in most directions. I took some shots of Jupiter around 12:30 Sunday morning to capture the Great Red Spot at the center. Turbulence was quite bad around 4/10. I haven’t processed them yet, but I doubt they are very good. Clouds returned around 1:30 am but it looked to be mostly clear to the south.  I wanted to capture some faint globulars in the south of Sagittarius so I set up the  StellacamII.  Unfortunately haze was readily apparent on the screen so I gave up on that project. We called it a night around 2:30 am. One good night out of two isn’t bad odds for  us amateur astronomers. We’re looking forward for to more visits in July and August.