Last night at Pinos(Saturday Oct 21) was awesome!
The road was re-opened by the forest service on the preceding day, just in time for the Orion meteor shower.
There was only one other amateur up there when I arrived in the afternoon but, by nightfall, at least 30 other scopes filled the parking lot.
It was refractor city up there with TAK APOs dominating the group. Several TAKs and two TMBs were represented in the 5" and 6" sizes, with several on massive mounts.
Despite the arrival of the hunting season, no disruptive effects occurred during the night although a couple of hikers managed to get themselves lost on a cliff but they were spotted by a search and rescue helicopter before nightfall and were rescued.
There was traffic from people coming to view the Orion meteor shower but they left after midnight and things calmed down.
Now to the good stuff: transparency and seing were great with no wind and a temperature of 32 degrees F. The most spectacular object of the evening had to be NGC 253 in Sculptor. It was incredible! It filled the eyepiece of my 65 AFOV pentax xl 10.5mm eyepiece in my 16" dob, from one edge of the field to the other. One of the TAK observers viewed it through my scope and couldn't believe it. This galaxy has to be seen to believed. It's said to be the apparent size of the full moon in the sky and it's immense: even though it's 11,000 light years away, it was reported by a TAK observer to be 80,000 light years in diameter and Astronomy magazine claims it can be seen visually at a dark site when it's riding high in the sky at a magnitude of 7.6!
I viewed a host of other galaxies in Perseus, Pegasus and Aries. Finally, Oren Soffer and Richard Spina invited me to view the blue snowball planetary in their 17" F 4.1 DOB at, get this, 1800 power. That's not a misprint, Oren used a 2.3mm eyepiece with a powermate and achieved a phenomenal amount of magnification and the object took it!
Both Oren and Richard shared great views of the horsehead nebula while I also observed Stephan's Quintet with the dimmest member at 15 magnitude being easy prey in my 16" dob.
I'm thinking of going up again during the week...
The road was re-opened by the forest service on the preceding day, just in time for the Orion meteor shower.
There was only one other amateur up there when I arrived in the afternoon but, by nightfall, at least 30 other scopes filled the parking lot.
It was refractor city up there with TAK APOs dominating the group. Several TAKs and two TMBs were represented in the 5" and 6" sizes, with several on massive mounts.
Despite the arrival of the hunting season, no disruptive effects occurred during the night although a couple of hikers managed to get themselves lost on a cliff but they were spotted by a search and rescue helicopter before nightfall and were rescued.
There was traffic from people coming to view the Orion meteor shower but they left after midnight and things calmed down.
Now to the good stuff: transparency and seing were great with no wind and a temperature of 32 degrees F. The most spectacular object of the evening had to be NGC 253 in Sculptor. It was incredible! It filled the eyepiece of my 65 AFOV pentax xl 10.5mm eyepiece in my 16" dob, from one edge of the field to the other. One of the TAK observers viewed it through my scope and couldn't believe it. This galaxy has to be seen to believed. It's said to be the apparent size of the full moon in the sky and it's immense: even though it's 11,000 light years away, it was reported by a TAK observer to be 80,000 light years in diameter and Astronomy magazine claims it can be seen visually at a dark site when it's riding high in the sky at a magnitude of 7.6!
I viewed a host of other galaxies in Perseus, Pegasus and Aries. Finally, Oren Soffer and Richard Spina invited me to view the blue snowball planetary in their 17" F 4.1 DOB at, get this, 1800 power. That's not a misprint, Oren used a 2.3mm eyepiece with a powermate and achieved a phenomenal amount of magnification and the object took it!
Both Oren and Richard shared great views of the horsehead nebula while I also observed Stephan's Quintet with the dimmest member at 15 magnitude being easy prey in my 16" dob.
I'm thinking of going up again during the week...
