good we stayed (Blue Mountains)

Woo hoo! An extra night! And the skies were lookin' good! I had made a new observing list. Trimmed some items, things viewed earlier, and a few silly selections, things from the wrong season. Had over 50 targets.

I had packed up the N11 and closed the THO. The C14 and Tele Vue were busy. Ian W offered his gear, telescope and eyepieces. Thanks! He showed me how to use the Sky Commander push-to system.

10:16 PM, July 14, 2013. I was at Ian W's 'scope, his custom 12½" Dobsonian. With Risa. With the Pentax SMC LX 10.5mm eyepiece. We viewed Titan to the left, Dione above (south), Tethys below (north), Rhea to the right (east). Good detail. Probably the best view for the whole weekend.

We took in the crescent Moon.

We talked about zodiacal light.

10:25 PM. Did I see lightning?! The bugs were bad. Ugh. Ian already had a mosquito coil burning under the table. I had my bug jacket and gloves on. Applied DEET.

Ian D dropped by. He was trying to image Saturn. He thought the C14 collimation was off. I offered to tune it up. Noted that we didn't actually change it after cleaning the corrector last summer.

Ian W and I tried to split Antares. He thought he saw the companion. I was not 100%.

A firefly landed on my cap!

I helped Risa identify features on the Moon using Virtual Moon Atlas. The crescent Moon turned red as it set into the distant trees.

11:17. The sky to the north was glowing brightly. There was an intense horizontal band of light above the tree tops. We enjoyed some really good, albeit brief, aurora! Risa shot time lapse with her Nikon atop my Manfrotto tripod. We could easily see green and purple colour on the little LCD!

I moved randomly east from Antares. Landed on the Lagoon. We tried the UHC filter briefly. I had Risa blink it. The aurora flared up again.

12:03 AM, July 15, 2013. I confirmed, with the software, I was on the Lagoon Nebula, aka Messier 8 (M8).

Spotted a double star to the west. Went and had a gander. HD 164536. The A and C stars at the obvious ones... In the Panoptic 27mm it was lovely. It is actually a quad star system. [ed: Haas calls this Arg 31 and only refers to the A and C stars.] Before I could explore further, Ian asked about the supernova. Right!

I looked up the host galaxy, NGC 4414, and Ian came about. I was not convinced I could see it. Ian thought he saw could. He checked the position on his iPhone and grew more confident. He admitted it was very dim. But no joy for me. Part of the issue was that we were looking too late... Coma Berenices was setting. And it was a little soft in the north-west.

12:35 AM. Ian asked about the other faint galaxy I had viewed the previous night. Oh yes, the Silver Needle. We pushed to NGC 4244 (Caldwell 26). I didn't think the view much better. Again, it was mucky in that direction. And low in elevation. Damn. It's probably pretty spectacular.

12:45. We viewed something a little higher in the sky: Messier 51 (M51). It looked good. There was some detail in the arms.

12:56. While Ian W prepared for his imaging run, I viewed the Blue Racquetball. Went to very high power, using the Type 5 Nagler 16mm with a Tele Vue 2.5x Barlow. That was 240x. I enjoyed the blueish-green shape. It was not perfectly round.

Ian W headed off to bed, to his trailer, leaving me to play. Night! Ian D had closed the GBO early. Risa had gone to bed some time ago. Dietmar completely his run. I was kinda happy about that for his was flooding the main floor with white light. I had to tolerate some white light in his POD for a bit. Then it got dark and quiet!

I fetched the Thermacell.

1:19. I returned to the Pac-Man Nebula. I could see something going on in the region... Hints of grey. Perhaps a filter would draw it out... I'd deal with that later.

I was drawn to the stars in the centre of the barely detectable nebula.

SkyTools told me the stars were part of an open cluster, NGC 281, and a star at the centre, HD 5005, was a seven-star system. Oooh!

I could easily pick off the A, C, and D stars. The A star was bright, at mag 7.8. C was close to A, slightly fainter, mag 8.8, to the south-east. The D star was to the south, further away, fainter again, 9.7. There were still more stars to identify...

1:35. Popped in the 2" UHC filter. Now the nebula was apparent. Still dim, to be sure, but obvious. Large. There was a dark region in the south west. Is that the mouth? I wondered?

I looked north and saw the aurora was back. Intense band again, just over the trees. Faint pillars.

1:40. Removed the removed filter and resumed identifying stars.

1:42. Focused on STI1454A to the south-west of HD 5005. A completely separate double star. The A and B components, while faint, were easily spotted.

Returned to HD 5005. I could not see the E star. Strange. ST3P said it was mag 12. I could see TYC 03663-0977 1, a mag 10.7 star, much further to the north without difficulty.

I could see H to the south-east. It was mag 11.2! But I could not see the I component, a mag 13.1 point. Huh. Was the sky poor tonight?

So, A, C, D, and H, no prob. I could not separate A and B. No E or I. Very strange, given I could see STI1454B at mag 12. I guess I'll have to come back... if I want to claim seeing all the members...

[ed: I didn't realise I had already viewed 1454, in Oct 2011, with Millie, when we were touring around.]

1:53. A bright satellite went through, heading south-west.

SkyTools revealed another double in the area. I stared at HD 4868. Huh. The software showed an A and B star.

1:56. Ah ha! Wow. The companion was really faint. To the west. A good distance away. I needed to use averted vision to spot it. Interesting...

The low battery warning popped up on John Littlejohn. I had thought about it earlier, being at the table, near Ian's SkyShed, I wouldn't have ready access to AC power. Even he remarked about not having an outlet. Oh well. I wasn't too worried. The netbook would carry on for a while. On the other side of the coin, having infinite power could make for a long night. And I didn't think I should stay up too late...

Headed over to HD 5177, a double well beyond the boundaries of the Pac-Man, to the south-east. I saw a yellow and blue pair. It was a bright primary.

The software showed a faint wide double just a little to the east, STI1468. I could not see the primary nor its companion. Telling. Both mag 13 stars...

The mozzies continued to find a way! Rotten.

2:07. Viewed NGC 7027. Another planetary. It was cool, very interesting at high power. Was it peanut shaped? Like the infinity symbol? [ed: Photos show it to not be round!] It was a cyan blue colour.

[ed: Ah ha. 7027 is "The Magic Carpet." I had left it in SkyTools as not logged, so to return. It was good to see again, at high mag, so to discern some shape.]

The aurora continued. But was more diffuse.

And, suddenly, the ASUS shut down. OK. That's it. I had enjoyed viewing unseen objects from the RASC Finest. I turned off the cooling fans, buttoned up Ian's 'scope, moved sensitive items to the shed, returned the drummer stool, packed up my gear, swung by the GBO, grabbed the power brick, spotted the dark red USB keyboard light (doh!), and locked up. Birds starting to chirp. Quiet in the house.

2:50. I was in bed. That was awesome. An extra night. And it was a real good one!