(The One with Clear, Cold Skies and a Mystery Car)

Four HAL members showed up to enjoy the clear skies at Alpha Ridge last night. Three were successful, but one suffered the heartbreak of technical difficulties. Happily, there were no incidents of equipment being blown away by high winds.

Mike imaged the Fish Head Nebula (IC 1795, adjacent to the Heart Nebula) in Cassiopeia and the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380) in Cepheus. The rest of us focused our imaging on Monoceros and Canis Major in the southern skies. Shrikant got nice results on the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) in Monoceros, while I started over on the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) and surrounding nebulosity and clusters on the Monoceros-Canis Major border with a redrawn 3.1 x 3.1-degree mosaic on the Vespera. Jose had planned to image the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359) just over the border in Canis Major, but he wasn’t able to get any data due to his ASIAIR refusing to connect to WiFi. He thinks he may have to go old-school and plug it in via Ethernet, but is going to troubleshoot the problem at home. Hopefully, that issue will be resolved before our next star party.

I made some visual observations of various open clusters in Taurus and Perseus (NGCs 1342, 1647, 1807, 1817) with the Dob, partially inspired by the Suburban Stargazer column in the January issue of Sky & Telescope, and also revisited one of the all-time greats, the Double Cluster (Caldwell 14) in Perseus.

There was an issue early on with someone who left his car parked beside the road just inside the entrance and went off wandering around the park. He was nowhere in sight by the time dusk fell, so I called the ranger, who said she’d be there in about 30 minutes. Fortunately, he returned to his car and left around 6:20, so I called off the ranger visit.

It was getting colder and windier around 10:00, so Shrikant and I decided to call it a night. I locked up HALO and the park and we left around 10:35.

Ernie Morse