It is more or less new moon; the cloud cover is down; I went out tonight.
Location: Saddle Ridge Farms (about 3 miles North of Huntington, WV – this is about 1- 2 miles from the church where Dave R. goes – its owned by a friend of mine)
Weather: warm and humid much more haze and fog then I’d imagined from my house.
Equipment: 10” f5.6 Discovery Dob on Tom Osypowski eq platform 40 mm (35x) and 32 mm (44x) University Optics 2” Konigs. (note: I have a Lumicon 2” long extension tube that I have to use to get these puppies to focus)
books & charts: Sky Atlas 2000 (SA2K) and The Night Sky Observers Guide (NSOG)
After getting lost and driving 6 miles on country roads I arrive. There is a paved road to the top of the hill (a plus). There are pole lights on the houses on 2 sides of the hill. I position to avoid any direct light. But the fog rises and lists the light. The sky glow from Huntington is awful, but I’m here and its not raining. I’m not even set up yet and the Dob’s tube is dripping dew before I’ve set up all my stuff (table, chair, observing chair, etc.) . With a cloth I wipe off the telrad and rubber band the Kendrick telrad dew heater to it and turn the knob to high. I sit my battery on the side ledge of the upper circle of the dob’s lazy susan. It fits nicely and I don’t trip over heater wires in the dark as I turn the ‘scope.
I go right to the veil in Cygnus and decide that this is not a Nebulae night. I unscrew the 1.25” adapter and screw in the 2”.
M39, well its an open cluster.
Popped down to Cassiopeia and cruised the clusters. The 40mm gives me 2 degrees and the 32 mm about 1.3 so the views are nice.
There’s dew on the 40mm. Out comes the 2” eyepiece heater, it gets plugged into the Kendrick controller. I can’t believe that the Kendrick is keeping the telrad (a first rate dew collector) dry and dew free. Wow. (The finder has had its eyepiece dew over long ago, I guess I need a dew heater for it too!)
I fell into the double cluster in Perseus. I like this at 79x with my 18mm but I’m too lazy to swap adapters. As I pop down on the seat of my observing chair I begin to sense how much dew has collected there.
On a lark I hop off the dipper bowl stars to M81 and M82. View is nice. Can’t see the smaller NCG galaxy that we saw at East Lynn Lake during the Messier marathon.
I move up to the Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula. Amazing how bright this thing is. I visit the nearby globular M71 in Sagitta. It looks dim. Need more power but I own no small 2” eyepieces.
I hop to the coat hanger cluster. This actually looks better with my 90mm [‘scope]. With the 10” I see many more background stars which makes the asterism harder to see, this is a binocular object.
Clouds move in so I pay my respects to the Ring Neblula and decide to pack it in.