[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - A Game of Portability

[Mike McCabe]

May 11th,2023; A Night on The Run:

The sky has been crazy lately. Between the smoke from theCanadian wildfires, the regular old water vapor clouds and the late onset ofdarkness that comes with the approaching summer solstice, it’s been tough tofind good deep sky observing opportunities. But I’ve got some things I’d liketo see, so if a window of clear skies pops up I’m probably going to try andtake advantage of it.

Last night was one of those. I have a couple of observingprojects in the works and a couple of the targets are pretty far west atnightfall, so time is of the essence or they’re on the back burner until nextyear. I stepped outside at 9:15pm to a mostly clear sky with seemingly lesssmoke impact than we were seeing during the day. I grabbed my charts, eyepiecesand a reasonably portable 4.5” Newtonian reflector and headed out to the yard.

The first target I was interested in was NGC 2392, theEskimo or Clown Face nebula in Gemini. At only 25° above the western horizon Ihad to set up on the eastern side of my yard to have it be above the trees. Noproblem, I walked everything over there and started my star hop, only to have ahuge band of clouds or smoke – I couldn’t tell which – rise up out of the westand block my view. Drats! Now what? 

Ursa major was in the clear and I had some targets there, soeverything got moved back to the western side of the yard and we got downto the business of hunting in the land of the Great Bear. Now I know that Ihave no business hunting targets with a 4.5” scope that have been a strugglewith a 10” scope, but you never know when your sky is suddenly going totransform from Bortle 7 to Bortle 2, so we tried anyway. Let’s just say thatthe three galaxies I attempted to view remained invisible to me and in themoment I may have blamed it on that encroaching cloud bank moving in on thearea, but insufficient light gathering power probably played a significant role in thatnon-success story. 

I was oh-for-four so far on the evening and the sky wasstarting to muddle up, but the area around Gemini had cleared again so all theequipment got dragged back to the east and we got down to the star hop. The skyreally was going now, and seeing the necessary stars in the finder waschallenging to say the least. But I’m nothing if not persistent, and after awhile spent bent over the little 9x50 device I finally landed on the ClownFace. It was surprisingly well rendered at 186x in the 4.5” glass. Success!

There are two double stars on Brendan’s observing objectiveslist for May, one of which is Kuma in Draco and the other Struve 698 in Auriga,and the small scope would do a wonderful job on them so I decided to see if Icould land at least one of them during the session. Unfortunately the head ofDraco rises above my eastern tree line much later than I wanted to be out, so Idragged all the equipment out to the street in front of the house to see if Icould bag the one in Auriga. That Mother Nature is a real jokester, and I’msure she was having a good laugh watching me traipse all around the place withmy hands full of observing equipment. She got the last laugh too, because assoon as I started gazing off into the northwest in pursuit of my quarry shepulled the curtain over the area with a big, thick bank of clouds as if to saynot tonight bucko, come again some other time.

And I will too. Her and I have an agreement – you win some,I win some. Last night it was her turn to win.

Keep Looking Up!

Sincerely,
Mike McCabe
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