(The One with High Winds and a New Impromptu Keyholder)

The high winds made for a frustrating star party experience last night. Mike had planned to image the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) in Cassiopeia with his 8″ SCT and Shrikant was going to observe the Orion Nebula with his 72mm refractor. Unfortunately, the gusty winds made guiding impossible. One particularly strong gust, which I think must’ve been over 20 mph, even moved Mike’s laptop across his table!

My Vespera was able to collect an hour’s worth of data on a mosaic of the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) in Monoceros and adjacent open clusters NGC 2335 and NGC 2343, although the wind caused a high rejection rate (50%) of the 10s sub exposures. Unfortunately, the mosaic framing was off a bit, so I’m missing half of one of the seagull’s wings. The problem is that IC 2177 technically refers to just the head of the seagull, and the surrounding nebulosity is not shown in the Vespera app interface. I’ll probably just discard the data and restart with a better framing next time.

Both Shrikant and Mike decided to leave around 8:00, but Mike discovered that someone (hopefully a park ranger) had locked the gate. I went out to unlock it for them. When I returned, I found that the top foam layer of my eyepiece case had blown away! I looked around the immediate area, but didn’t find it. I was planning on just closing up the park at that point, but my 8″ Dob was all set up, and I hadn’t actually observed anything with it yet, so I decided to take a quick look at a few targets. I observed the triple star Beta Monocerotis (aka Herschel’s Wonder Star), double stars Iota Orionis and Struve 747 and then the Orion Nebula, which was absolutely magnifcent and gorgeous at 85X with a UHC filter. It was a real shame that it was so windy, as the skies were very clear, transparency was good and it wasn’t very cold. Seeing wasn’t great, and I had a difficult time splitting the BC pair (3″ separation) of Beta Monocerotis at 170X.

I then turned on the park lights, searched all over the parking lot for my foam layer (no luck), and then closed up HALO and the park by around 9:45. Thanks to Shrikant and Mike for coming out and making a valiant effort. Hope we all have better luck next time!

Ernie Morse