Telescope Reviews: Wednesday Night at Cherry Springs

Well, the weather forecasters were wrong again, at least partially. We had a bit more than two hours of good observing time last night at Cherry Springs. The sky was almost totally cloud free when the sun set and the Milky Way came on like gangbusters, as the sky darkened.

I viewed a number of objects with my 15x70s and Tele Vue refractor, among them M8, B86, M11, the Pipe Nebula and a number of other dark nebulae in Sagittarius, Scutum, and Cygnus, M71, Collinder 399, Melotte 20, the Double Cluster, Stock 2, M31, M33, NGC 752 and the Golf Putter asterism, and an asterism in Cygnus known as Vultus Irrisorie (The Face with a Smile) that I observed with the 15x70s and my Orion ShortTube 80.

Through Tony's 20" Starmaster and a 9mm Nagler T6 and a 6mm Ethos, I had a better look at PC 19, also known as PK 32+7.2, the faint planetary nebula in Serpens Cauda that I saw the night before. It's listed at magnitude 12.1p and has a size of 14", although visually it was considerably dimmer and smaller. I also saw PK 84+1.1 in Cygnus, another dim planetary nebula that appeared almost stellar, even at 419x (6mm Ethos).

I hadn't been aware that my friend John Vogt had arrived at the park on Monday and was set up not to far from where the 30" Starmaster was. I saw him during the day on Tuesday but never ventured down to his location that evening because Tony and I were busy watching the two Galilean satellite mutual events that took place and conditions began to worsen afterwards. John owns a wonderful 32" f/4 prize-winning Dob that he built himself. Last night I headed down to his scope and beheld NGC 6960 and 6992, the western and eastern segments of the Veil Nebula complex, in all their glory through a filtered 31mm Nagler T5. I had a list of challenge objects for John to train his mighty behemoth on, but as we were homing in on Shakhbazian 166, a faint galaxy group in Ursa Minor, clouds began to fill the sky.

John began to close down his scope but a friend of his was still observing with a 20" f/4.5 Obsession, through which I saw M101. A couple of novices had a 16" Meade LightBridge next to the 20". I asked if I could try it out and put M13 into view with a 20mm Nagler T5 when they consented. Draco was now in the clear so I suggested NGC 6543 (the Cat's Eye Nebula), which they hadn't seen before.

I then headed back to my campsite. A larger hole opened up for 10 or 15 minutes. I did a little more binocular observing before the sky became overcast.

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.