Seven HAL members enjoyed a mix of visual observing and astrophotography on an unseasonably warm night at Alpha Ridge Park. There was quite a diverse collection of telescopes in use. Seeing was about average, but transparency seemed poor. Unfortunately, I started packing up before I thought to take an SQM-L reading and didn’t realize it until after I had already turned the park lights back on. My personal naked-eye limiting magnitude was worse than 4th magnitude, as I was unable to see Iota Virginis (mag 4.1). However, that was at an altitude of around 45 degrees in the southern sky, which is heavily light polluted at Alpha Ridge. Temperature was in the mid 80s to high 70s with very little wind. Dew didn’t start accumulating until after 11:00. Mosquitos were present but stealthy. I didn’t realize that I was incurring bites on the backs of my hands until they started itching, and then I applied some DEET. Better late than never!
The big news is that Sundar’s Starsense Explorer app is now working! He reinstalled it and got a new code from Celestron support, and that resolved the issues it was having. He was thrilled that it’s finally performing well and he enjoyed observing globular clusters M3, M5 and M92 and the fine double star Algieba with his 130mm Newtonian.
Jose continued imaging M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy) with his Carbonstar 150mm reflector and got a lot of good data on it.
Ian was imaging Markarian’s Chain of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster with a Seestar S50. He also noticed that the transparency wasn’t great, but he was still happy with the results.
Mike was working with a new ZWO 130mm refractor and had a lot of fun imaging M101. He said that he’s enjoying using this telescope much more than his two previous ones.
Todd started out imaging the galaxy M94 with a Celestron 9.25″ EdgeHD SCT, but switched over to M101. He showed me stacked images on his tablet at the end of the night and they looked fantastic. It was a good night for imaging the Pinwheel!
Rich was making visual observations with a TeleVue 60mm refractor and an 8″ Mag One Portaball truss tube Newtonian, which is an interesting and unique scope that I had never seen or heard of before. He was pleased to have located the globular cluster M13 with just a finder scope and also viewed the moon and double stars Castor and Mizar.
I observed 4 double stars in the northwestern sky (STF 1083, 41 Aurigae, beta Cam and 11,12 Cam) with my Orion Eon 80mm refractor and also the asterism Grohusko-1 in Virgo. I was trying out a new Svbony dew heater strap on the Orion, and it seemed to work fine (although dew was not much of an issue). I set up my 8″ Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob later in the evening and viewed M5. I tried to image M97 (Owl Nebula) with my Vespera and an OIII/SII filter, but it wasn’t able to track the target with the filter in place. I switched to imaging globulars M53 and NGC 5053, which are only 1 degree apart in the sky and are apparently close together in physical space as well. I started packing up at midnight with hopes of leaving by 12:30, but I underestimated how long it would take to break down and stow 3 telescopes! I probably won’t try to use all 3 at once again, but I had something that I wanted to try out on eac
h of them (it was a Starsense Explorer app update for the Dob). I wonder how many telescopes I could actually fit into my Elantra? There is really only one way to find out.
After packing up my totally awesome array of telescopes, I locked up HALO, verified all other doors were locked, left the park and locked the gate behind me at 12:50 AM.
Ernie Morse