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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Ski Trip to Mammoth, brought the 102 and The New Atlas of the Stars.

Equipment:

The 102AZ f5 and The New Atlas of the Stars.

Location: Mammoth Lakes, CA, parking lot of Kathryn's condo.  Some sodium vapor lamps in direct view 40 feet away, some areas shielded.

Weather:

A few cirrus early on, cleared up well.

Goals going in:

Give the 102 a dark sky test run.  See if I could find my way around the sky with a map.  See the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33).  See if I could find M46 and see the planetary nebula in the cluster.

Summary

Awesome night.  A small rich-field scope in a bright sky is not a real impressive tool.  In the very dark Mammoth sky, it was really cool.  Saw some stuff I hadn't seen before, saw some stuff I had pointed at before but was unable to see, saw some things I'd seen before in a totally different way.

Highlights: 

Andromeda Galaxy was easy to find.  The Pinwheel, which frankly I'd been unable to see even well even with the N11 at Tierra Del Sol, I was clearly able to see.  It looked like a nebula, with a clear boundary but no interior detail, but it clearly stood out from the very dark background.

M1, the Crab Nebula, was clearly visible.

The three Auriga Messier Open Clusters looked good and bright, easy to scroll back and forth between them.  

M81 and M82, favorites of mine (a face-on spiral and an edge-on spiral in the same Field of View!), which I've seen in a number of SCT's and with the 102 in a bright sky, were absolutely stunning.  A very dark background with very bright stars (mega contrast!), wide variety of color and brightness.  And in this field two objects very clearly not stars.  M82, honored its nickname showing a Cigar-shape, with a strongly mottled edge.  Amazing contrast between the background of space, the starfield, and the otherworldly galaxies.  

The Starfield between the lower part of Canis Major and Puppis was pretty cool, M93 and NGC 2362, in particular.

Misses:

M94, couldn't find it, pretty sure it was in the field of view, but couldn't see it.  M101 and M51 couldn't see.  Found M46, but couldn't see the Planetary.  Couldn't find or see the Leo Triplets or any of the M105, M95, M96 galaxies.