Sky this Week

Friday evening we went to the Little Thompson Obsvervatory in Berthoud, CO. to a pre-screening of the upcoming PBS film “Seeing in the Dark” by Timothy Ferris.

The documentary film features beautiful, high definition scenic and astronomical photography. The film is about the joy of observing the night sky with telescope and camera. It starts out with Ferris’s reminiscence of observing from a Florida beach as a teenager in the 1950s. It has interviews with a number of amateur astronomers such as Robert Gendler, the Bisque brothers (who were in attendence at the LTO screening), and shots of the 2006 Stellafane ATM convention. It is a beautifully done, extremely interesting film.

The film is being prescreened by PBS at various planetariums. The next showing in the Denver area is at the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder on Wed. Aug. 29 at 7:00 pm. It will air on PBS stations on Wed. Sept 19, check your local listings.

I spent the weekend near Fox Park, WY at the annual “Weekend Under The Stars” (WUTS) star party. Excellent conditions this year, no dew, mostly clear all night, temperature in the low 50s, no wind, and fair to good turbulence. Around 2 am Monday morning I counted about 30 stars within the great square of Pegasus indicating that the limiting magnitude was around +6.5 (I’m an old geezer, those with good eyesight would do better).

Just after midnight I abandoned the scope, put a tarp on the ground and got out some cushions and blankets from the RV. Laying on the ground next to my wonderful wife, looking up into the blackness at the incredible Milky Way and the numerous brilliant stars from a dark sky site was a great experience. It gives a much different perspective than our normal (vertical) view as you can see so much more of it (highly recommended).

My meteor counts early Monday morning Aug 13 were:

0:30 to 1:30 am : 57 total (54 Perseids, 3 Delta Aquarids)
1:30 to 2:30 am : 77 total (73 Perseids, 4 Delta Aquarids)

These are pretty close to the typical peak rate for the Perseids (60 to 80 per hour).

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.

Last Saturday evening I met up with friends at a place we affectionately refer to as “Cactus Flats North” in the Pawnee National Grasslands about 40 miles west of Fort Collins, CO.  Usually, the area appears bleak and dry.  Not this time, the prairie was gorgeous. It was delightfully green with a sprinkling of colorful flowers.

(Cactus and flowers picture by Gary Garzone). 

Early in the evening, the Moon and Venus were a pretty view, much more so than the below image shows as the glow from the western sky doesn’t show here.

Unfortunately, clouds moved in and the transparency was poor for the most part. There some were holes in the clouds here and there that allowed occasional views.  Turbulence was quite good so I took some Saturn shots which I’ll post later.  Around 1:30 am or so Sunday morning the sky cleared so we had a good night visiting galaxies in Ursa Major. The Whirlpool Messier 51, Bodes galaxy M80 and edge-on M81 were particularly spectacular through Gary’s 30″ dob.  We also had to look at some of the  summer stuff  the Dumbbell  M27, the Trifid, and the Eagle. Around 3:30 am I tried for a couple comets. I haven’t processed them yet. I fairly sure I got 96P Maccholz as I could see it on the monitor. I’m not sure about C/2007 VZ13, I verified the star field but couldn’t identify the comet.  Stacking and processing may bring it out but I have doubts.