Hmm. Labor Day weekend. Three days off. Sounds like road trip time to me! And this time I have a scope to bring along.
Friday was so busy at work that I ignored the first clear sky I've seen in a while in favor of bed. Saturday night found me in the Coronado National Forest, which is in the bottom southeast corner of Arizona, almost to the border. There were three annoying light domes, which I hadn't counted on, but I got some viewing done anyway. Mars, of course, and I watched the tiny sliver of moon for a while (yes, I still like to watch the moon
, before I started trying to find something more interesting. Found lots of lightning flickering in the clouds, which gradually surrounded me, and not much else. Bummer.
Sunday I hit the road again, annoyed with my crappy luck, and took a shot at a place with a fantastic dark sky: Kaibab National Forest, just short of the Grand Canyon. Bingo! Here I had luck and found many nebulae, assorted clusters, both open and globular, and at least one faint little fuzzball of a galaxy. I saw the Swan, a favorite of mine, small but beautiful. Really must get some nice EPs... Fairly sure I saw the Lagoon and the Trifid, but not positive. Of course, Albireo was one of the first things I looked at, since it comes out so nice and early. But I was amazingly unable to get the Andromeda Galaxy to show up in either finder or scope, despite the fact that I could see the blasted thing hanging there very prettily. Lesson number one in humility.
Lesson number two in humility followed hard on the heels of number one: it's pretty hard to find your way around the sky without a handy-dandy equatorial mount. I've never used a Dob before this one, and it's driving me crazy and making me determined to figure out how to find things. Hmm, beginner's lab with my club coming up soon...
Anyway, even just looking without knowing what I was looking at half the time was fun. Saw what I'm pretty sure was a supernova remnant, and some cool nebulas. Had a nap and then woke up in time to see the Orion Nebula. Wow! Saw it before, at a slightly less dark site, but this time it was awesome. But then a cloud ate it all up.
In all, not a bad weekend.
It'll probably be the last time I cover the entire state of Arizona in search of darkness, but what the heck, not like I had anything else to do this weekend.
Maybe next time I'll know what I'm doing and be able to find and identify objects on purpose, instead of randomly looking and saying "Wow! That's a globular cluster!"
~Denise
Friday was so busy at work that I ignored the first clear sky I've seen in a while in favor of bed. Saturday night found me in the Coronado National Forest, which is in the bottom southeast corner of Arizona, almost to the border. There were three annoying light domes, which I hadn't counted on, but I got some viewing done anyway. Mars, of course, and I watched the tiny sliver of moon for a while (yes, I still like to watch the moon
, before I started trying to find something more interesting. Found lots of lightning flickering in the clouds, which gradually surrounded me, and not much else. Bummer. Sunday I hit the road again, annoyed with my crappy luck, and took a shot at a place with a fantastic dark sky: Kaibab National Forest, just short of the Grand Canyon. Bingo! Here I had luck and found many nebulae, assorted clusters, both open and globular, and at least one faint little fuzzball of a galaxy. I saw the Swan, a favorite of mine, small but beautiful. Really must get some nice EPs... Fairly sure I saw the Lagoon and the Trifid, but not positive. Of course, Albireo was one of the first things I looked at, since it comes out so nice and early. But I was amazingly unable to get the Andromeda Galaxy to show up in either finder or scope, despite the fact that I could see the blasted thing hanging there very prettily. Lesson number one in humility.
Lesson number two in humility followed hard on the heels of number one: it's pretty hard to find your way around the sky without a handy-dandy equatorial mount. I've never used a Dob before this one, and it's driving me crazy and making me determined to figure out how to find things. Hmm, beginner's lab with my club coming up soon...
Anyway, even just looking without knowing what I was looking at half the time was fun. Saw what I'm pretty sure was a supernova remnant, and some cool nebulas. Had a nap and then woke up in time to see the Orion Nebula. Wow! Saw it before, at a slightly less dark site, but this time it was awesome. But then a cloud ate it all up.
In all, not a bad weekend.
It'll probably be the last time I cover the entire state of Arizona in search of darkness, but what the heck, not like I had anything else to do this weekend. Maybe next time I'll know what I'm doing and be able to find and identify objects on purpose, instead of randomly looking and saying "Wow! That's a globular cluster!"
~Denise
