Hello astronomy fans! I was hopeful that we'd get in a good night at Eagle Bluff, and suprisingly with all the rotten weather lately, last night turned out pretty good.
Mike Rowlands from the LCAAS was the first one there, followed closely by Jeff Newland. We set up and spotted a cresent Moon in the twilight, but what we were really looking for at that time was the ISS/shuttle due to come over at 7:58. We spotted it low to the North at about 8:04. 8)
Luka and Captain Kirk got there shortly thereafter and we started in on the Messier Objects at 8:35 p.m. Luka, Jeff, Kirk and I all had 8" aperature scopes and Mike was the Aperture King with his 12" Dob. 😉
The Messier Objects we got were: M31, M32, M103, M81-M82, M79, M65-M66-NGC 3628, M76, M33, M93, M52, M34, M1, M45, NGC 7789 (just because), M37, M36, M78, M36, M46-M47, M35, M50, M97, M108, M48, M106, M53, M42-M43 (Mike nailed the E-star in the Trapezium), M64, M94, M63, M104, M3, M101, M51, M58-M59-M60, M89-M90-M91-M88, M95-M96-M105, M86-M84, M44, M67, M98, Saturn break, M98, M100, M13, M49, M61, M92, M68, M109, M5. (We started at 8:35 p.m. and these objects were one right after another in a steady progression until 12:05 a.m. At this point we were running out of readily available targets and our pace slowed. It took us from 12:15 a.m. to 2:15 a.m. to get:) M102 NGC 5866, M40, M57, M83, M12, M10, M56, M80, M107, M4, and M27.
During the course of the night, we looked at a few other objects and the ones I remember were NGC 5053 by M53, splitting Gamma Virginis, Luka having fun with the Rosette Nebula (love those filters!) and others, but I can't remember them all. ???
The action was hot and heavy and we were all busy scurrying from one scope to another in the dark parking lot. There was only one family at Eagle Bluff and they never did come and look, which is good because we were VERY busy. When I do this again, I think I'll set my scope up, but just use it for emergency and use a more mobile clip board with list to record all the action and just go around to everyone else's scope to verify targets and just gawk. 😀
It was enormous fun. All those guys have a lot of astronomical skill, and I was really pleasantly suprised at how adept Luka is at finding targets with how new he is to the hobby of astronomy. Mike has setting circles on his scope that he can find targets with, I had never seen that before. Jeff has this wonderful eyepiece he uses on his scope that is almost 3D, it's very cool. and what can you say about Ironman Capt. Kirk who stayed around for 10 more Messiers? He holds the RAC record for the most Messiers on a single night. ;D
I was really tired on the drive home, so much so that on certain stretches, I didn't recognize where I was unless I thought hard about it. 😛 I was glad to get home, but very, very glad that we had such AGNFA! 🙂