As with many of Unk’s birthdays, this one combined “space”
(as in building a new model Launch Umbilical Tower to go with my recent Airfix
Saturn V build), Mexican food, ham radio, and a sizable portion of amateur
astronomy. Actually, the amateur astronomy got done the evenings prior to and immediately
following the big day, since I knew I’d likely be tuckered out from activating
a park for Parks on the Air and too full of Tex-Mex chow and
margaritas to even think about taking a telescope into the backyard…
Indeed, I was. We had a great time at Park US-1042, Gulf
Shores State Park, but oh-was-it-hot. We made 40 CW QSOs with my new Yaesu
FT-891 in just over an hour, and that was enough. It was crazy hot, even
under a picnic pavilion and even with the constant sea-breezes blowing. Back
home, I dumped the sand out of my Crocs, spiffed up a little, and made tracks
for Unk’s longtime fave Mexican place, El Giro’s. Many margaritas cooled
me off, and I was soon ready to tuck into my unwavering birthday fare, the famous
#13. A little TV with the felines thereafter,
and it would be night-night time. I’d hit the backyard the next eve.
If you are a long-time reader of the Little Ol’ AstroBlog
from Chaos Manor South, you know five years ago, it had almost run up on the
rocks. In 2019, there was but one new post—and not until the end of
December of that year! An accident the Rodster suffered at the beginning of ‘19,
and the lingering effects of a rather un-looked for early retirement almost
spelled curtains for the News from Possum Swamp.
I got back in the saddle as 2020 came in—I found I still
wanted to bring the AstroBlog to you—and we are now on the reasonable schedule
of one issue per month. At my age and with my physical infirmities, I don’t
travel as much as I once did. I did make it back to one star party last year and hope to do so again this fall. But… No longer traveling from star party to star
party like a demented Johnny Appleseed means I don’t have as much to tell you
about. It sure ain’t like 2016, the year I did so many events a friend of mine started
calling the annum “Uncle Rod’s Farewell Tour.”
Not being hither and yon much and having cut back on my
astro-gear addiction means the emphasis now is on observing. In part,
that is choice. I just don’t need (and don’t want to spend on) more and more
astro-goodies. In part that is necessity. Post-pandemic, there ain’t as much
astrostuff to spend on. Mostly, though, as the autumn of your Old Uncle’s time
on this world deepens to winter, observing is more important to me than buying.
And most of my observing is now right back where it began all those decades ago,
in the backyard…
And so, we’ve come to summer in Chaos Manor South’s
backyard. This is a better time for me to view the spring deep sky objects than earlier on. They are across the Meridian, into the west,
and out of the trees and the most egregious part of the Possum Swamp light
dome. Oh, there are more bugs than there were, and it’s hotter and muggier, but
at least Suzie the SeeStar, and my friendly old (don’t tell her I called her
that) ETX, Charity Hope Valentine, and I, can get a better good look at the
great galaxies of Spring.
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| The Number 13! |
Nota Bene: The
imaging was done over the course several evenings, and the visual work on a
couple of separate nights…
Do you have to be crazy to do deep sky astronomy in Possum
Swamp at the height of a Gulf Coast summer? No, but it helps
<badda-bing!>. Me and the girls, Charity and Suzie, did our best, but
every evening was plagued by haze and often by drifting clouds. There were nights
when it didn’t get much under 90F till near midnight. Suzie’s exposure times were limited, 30
minutes being about as long as she could often go. Sometimes, Charity and I would cool our heels for quite a spell while waiting for the sky to improve.
M3
Yeah, yeah, I know, Skeeter. Messier 3 ain’t in Coma but in nearby
Canes Venatici. So what? On any night it's above the horizon, I am gonna take a
look at the ruler of the spring globs (not that it has much competition). Honestly, I didn’t expect much. The sky was
literally milk. There wasn’t a Moon in the sky, however, so Charity and
I remained hopeful and went that-a-way.
One long ago Urban Astronomer observing run, I turned my
scope to Messier 3 from the heavily light polluted backyard of the old Chaos
Manor South. That scope happened to be my humongous C11, and I was amply
rewarded: “MAN is M3 beautiful! 127x with the C11 reveals many tiny stars
from the outer periphery of the cluster and extending right across its core.”
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| Beautiful M3... |
Susie? As you can see, she delivered a credible
M3, even with just 21 minutes of exposure. Despite the icky skies, Messier 3
shined on—yeah—just like some crazy diamond. Not only that, one of my favorite
little “field” galaxies, NGC 5263, shows off its minute disk in the shot. The
image, by the way, is nearly unprocessed. It’s just the .jpg that Suze sent to
my phone after she stacked it. I adjusted levels a bit, but that was it.
M64
Hokay, over to tonight’s stomping ground, Coma Berenices. I began where Urban Astronomer begins, with one of the constellation’s
showpieces, M64, the Blackeye galaxy.
When Miss Charity stopped her weasels-with-tuberculosis slewing noise
and I put my eye to the eyepiece, there the Blackeye was. Well, the galaxy,
anyway. Given the sky and the fact M64 is now getting down in the west, I
had to guess at the black eye, the dark spot near the M64's nucleus. I
thought I could detect it with the 15mm Expanse eyepiece, but that verged on
wishful thinking.
Which was really not much different from what I’d seen with
my 6-inch Newtonian and younger eyes those years ago at Chaos Manor South: “I
convinced myself I saw evidence of the black eye, but, in truth, I’m not sure
if I saw it or not. It’s incredibly subtle in this aperture in the light
pollution…” Wanna make the dark
feature pop out in the suburbs? 10-inches of telescope and high power on a
night of steady seeing is what is needed.
It should be no surprise by now that The Suzie laughed at
the minor challenge of the Blackeye. Not only is the feature starkly visible in
her images, enlarging the picture and doing some processing revealed surprising
detail. Other than cropping, the pic here is, again, purty much as it
came out of the telescope.
NGC 4565
There are some deep sky objects that never look bad.
Almost any telescope and any sky will give you something of them. That said, NGC
4565, the vaunted Flying Saucer Galaxy is a galaxy, and no other variety
of deep sky object is more damaged by light pollution. Nevertheless, one spring
eve I had a go at the ‘Saucer with my C11 downtown…
With direct vision at 127x, NGC 4565 first appears as a
round nebulous blob about 1’ or less in diameter with a tiny, bright star-like
nucleus. A little averted vision quickly
reveals the edge-on disk that forms the saucer. I’m confident I’m seeing at
least 5’ of disk on either side of the core.”
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| Blackeye lookin' good! |
I was afraid Charity’s answer to “Have you see the saucers?”
would be NO. My best girl surprised me though, turning up 4565 without fuss in
the 26mm Super Plössl. That said, on this eve we didn’t get farther than the “round,
nebulous blob” stage, and I’m not convinced I saw a trace of the nucleus, either.
By the time Suze set her sights on the Saucer, it was riding
high, and I didn’t think she’d have much trouble with it. I did know that the
higher an object, the more apparent the field rotation, but that isjust the way it is with an alt-azimuth mount. Anyhow, Suzie’s shot shows off the nucleus,
the bulge of the The-Day-The-Earth-Stood-Still flying saucer, and the
equatorial dust lane. Zooming in even
hints at irregularity in the dust-lane. NGC 4562 is easy to see. All that in a mere
25 minute of exposure.
M53
M53 is OK, it really is. But it definitely plays
second fiddle to M3. Its main problem is it’s a little small. Resolution
is not at all difficult, though, as I found with my urban 6-inch: “Round with a grainy, diffuse core. As I
continue to stare…I’m surprised to see stars popping out at the edges.”
That must have been a way above average night. On the
night me and Charity were given, the 5-inch MCT required 200x and some averted
imagination to pull some stars out of the soup. They were impossible to
hold steady and winked in and out like far-distant fireworks.
Charity’s rendition of M53 is pretty pleasing. 22 minutes
shows a fine spray of stars and even shows color in them. But you know
what? In some ways I prefer her 4-minute exposure. Almost as many stars, and a
more even background.
Lurking near M53 is its little-buddy glob, NGC 5053. It really is Gilligan to the Skipper of M53.
It is loose, very loose, looking much more like an open cluster than a globular
(a quick glance at its color-magnitude diagram, however, shows it to be a glob).
It is not easy for any telescope in the city—I wasn’t always successful with it
even with my 12-inch, Old Betsy.
I think my NexStar 11 GPS did very well to show a few of its
stars and the vague general haze that forms the flattened body of the cluster.
But it wasn’t much, no not much at all. In the ETX 125PE? Was it there
or was it not there at all? I had a tough time deciding. Switching eyepieces, doing lots of looking, and using every visual trick in the
book—averted vision, jiggle the scope, etc.—made me decide I’d seen some hint
of this toughie.
What’s tough for my aged eyes isn’t at all difficult for young lady Suzie. Her 17 minutes of exposure gave The Blah-blah-blah Cluster (my nickname for it) form and substance. Lots of teeny stars. It made me wonder if a darker sky and a longer exposure could have made it look a little like a glob, as shots from good skies do.
And so, the hour grew late—as your aged Uncle reckons such
things now—the dew began to fall ever more heavily, and it was time to wrap up
my birthday evening backyard deep sky tour.
Soon, Charity was safely in her case, and I was again ensconced on the
couch with the felines watching Project Mercury videos on YouTube to the tune
of cold 807s for me and mucho catnip for them.
Postscript… RIP Charity?
The “Tresses” chapter in The Urban Astronomer’s Guide
goes on to seven more objects beyond NGC 5053. Why aren’t they here? Because
Charity and I did not get to observe them. Just as we finished with NGC
5053, disaster struck. I hit the mode key to select the next DSO…and
nothing happened. I mashed it again…and hieroglyphics appeared briefly on
the Autostar display before it went blank. I cycled the power, and it was
clear the Autostar was booting, just no display.
Next morning, I opened up the HC cleaned the ribbon cable
connection with Deoxit, reseated it, etc. No joy. It appears the display is
gone. I am examining my options. I could pay a lot of money for a used Autostar
on eBay that might last a while or might not. Buying a new
Autostar/Audiostar is out of the question.
As you may have heard, Meade has gone out of business
along with Orion. There’ve been no official announcements, but it’s clear
these companies, at least under their current owner, are GONE PECANS. Even if
they weren’t gone, the Autostar, like a lot of other Meade items, has
been unavailable for quite some time. Sure, I could defork Charity’s OTA and
put her on another mount… but it just wouldn’t be the same.
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| Miss Charity Hope Valentine 2004 - 2024. |
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