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

[Vernon Fritch]

Last night was also the Celtics' turn to win. Game 7 Sunday time TBD.

Vernon.

On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 11:06 AM Mike McCabe <cartech2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> *May 11th, 2023; A Night on The Run:*
>
> The sky has been crazy lately. Between the smoke from the Canadian
> wildfires, the regular old water vapor clouds and the late onset of
> darkness that comes with the approaching summer solstice, it’s been tough
> to find good deep sky observing opportunities. But I’ve got some things I’d
> like to see, so if a window of clear skies pops up I’m probably going to
> try and take advantage of it.
>
> Last night was one of those. I have a couple of observing projects in the
> works and a couple of the targets are pretty far west at nightfall, so time
> is of the essence or they’re on the back burner until next year. I stepped
> outside at 9:15pm to a mostly clear sky with seemingly less smoke impact
> than we were seeing during the day. I grabbed my charts, eyepieces and a
> reasonably portable 4.5” Newtonian reflector and headed out to the yard.
>
> The first target I was interested in was NGC 2392, the Eskimo or Clown
> Face nebula in Gemini. At only 25° above the western horizon I had to set
> up on the eastern side of my yard to have it be above the trees. No
> problem, I walked everything over there and started my star hop, only to
> have a huge band of clouds or smoke – I couldn’t tell which – rise up out
> of the west and block my view. Drats! Now what?
>
> Ursa major was in the clear and I had some targets there, so everything
> got moved back to the western side of the yard and we got down to the
> business of hunting in the land of the Great Bear. Now I know that I have
> no business hunting targets with a 4.5” scope that have been a struggle
> with a 10” scope, but you never know when your sky is suddenly going to
> transform from Bortle 7 to Bortle 2, so we tried anyway. Let’s just say
> that the three galaxies I attempted to view remained invisible to me and in
> the moment I may have blamed it on that encroaching cloud bank moving in on
> the area, but insufficient light gathering power probably played a
> significant role in that non-success story.
>
> I was oh-for-four so far on the evening and the sky was starting to muddle
> up, but the area around Gemini had cleared again so all the equipment got
> dragged back to the east and we got down to the star hop. The sky really
> was going now, and seeing the necessary stars in the finder was challenging
> to say the least. But I’m nothing if not persistent, and after a while
> spent bent over the little 9x50 device I finally landed on the Clown Face.
> It was surprisingly well rendered at 186x in the 4.5” glass. Success!
>
> There are two double stars on Brendan’s observing objectives list 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 I could
> land at least one of them during the session. Unfortunately the head of
> Draco rises above my eastern tree line much later than I wanted to be out,
> so I dragged all the equipment out to the street in front of the house to
> see if I could bag the one in Auriga. That Mother Nature is a real
> jokester, and I’m sure she was having a good laugh watching me traipse all
> around the place with my hands full of observing equipment. She got the
> last laugh too, because as soon as I started gazing off into the northwest
> in pursuit of my quarry she pulled the curtain over the area with a big,
> thick bank of clouds as if to say not 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20230512/35b0effc/attachment.html>