Here’s the observing report some of you have been waiting for. Jimi Lowrey and I went observing for two nights (nights of July 3 and July 4 2019) in the Warner Mountains with my Obsession 18” f/4.5 (on an equatorial platform). Our elevation must have been around 8000 feet and the location was a few miles down the dirt road (S. Warner Rd.) towards the Surprise Valley from the Patterson campground.
The only major drawback of our observing site was our low elevation compared to our local surroundings — my low-clearance car could not drive most of the final two-track road that climbed from a valley into a higher local elevation due to several minefields of rocks. This could be a reason for us to see higher-than-expected humidity conditions, considering that we were right across the road from a marshy valley. The mosquito population made GSSP feel like heaven — my skin is yet to recover from the bites. DEET was a life-saver.
The developed campgrounds have significant tree cover and are not very useful for observing. Thus, any location one may pick for observing will necessarily have no cell service, no water, no toilets, no electricity, whereby preparedness is of paramount importance, and going in groups is helpful. A search for a place that has lower humidity, higher local elevation, fewer mosquitoes and a better flat, vegetation-free area to set up a telescope is desirable.
Night Sky:
Now for the important part. All the hardships of this location -- the 8 miles of dirt road, the lack of amenities and cell service, the mosquitoes -- are all quickly forgiven when one looks up at the night sky. Consecutively for two nights, I witnessed what was comparable to the darkest night skies I’ve ever seen. Despite the summer Milky Way and Jupiter being high up in the sky, the surroundings were dark. Jimi was unable to see his dark shoes. We were barely able to see any structure in the foliage that surrounded us. Jimi could not see me sitting at my laptop about 10ft from the telescope where he was standing. With minimal effort, I was able to see a 6.9mag Star. M92 was a naked eye object. If we had an SQM, I would expect it to read _at least_ 21.9, probably closer to 22.0. It reminded me of that amazing night at Texas Star Party this year where multiple SQMs read 22+.
The structure in the Milky Way was strong and well-defined. We observed “three bright lanes” of the summer Milky Way near Sagittarius and Scorpius — the two that one normally observes, and an additional loop of faint light starting from near Dschubba and looping around towards Ophiuchus.
Despite the mountainous terrain, seeing was steady for the most part.
Conditions — Night 1: (July 3–4 2019)
Jimi and I were both really tired, having left GSSP with extreme sleep deprivation. We did not last long. We looked at some eye candy for an hour or two. After this duration, we observed the formation of frost everywhere (secondary and primary were spared, but Telrad and eyepieces weren’t) and a slight brightening in the night sky and decided to quit. It also was extremely cold for a mid-summer night, reaching 32 F by midnight.
Jeff, when you read the observing report for this night, rest assured this is the real Jimi Lowrey looking at Messier objects! — now you know why. We still did not look at Jupiter.
Conditions — Night 2: (July 4–5 2019)
The conditions were consistently exceptional. There was some evening dew/frost formation, but this stopped about 30 minutes after dark. Jimi and I started at about 10:30PM and went on to 2AM. We had to quit at 2AM in order to be in proper condition to drive out the next day.
Observing — Night 1:
1.
The view was astounding for an 18”. I have never seen so much halo around M51. The contrast of the spiral arms was incredible. I have never noticed a well-marked right-angle brightening in one of the spiral arms before in an 18”, and here it stood out naturally. Unfortunately, Jimi and I were too tired to remember to look for the “E”.
2.
The central star was not too hard averted, unfiltered.
3.
Was bursting with HII regions and spotted well-defined spiral arms.
4. Bird’s head galaxy in Lyra (
Both Jimi and I had several pops of the “worm” (
This is pretty much all I remember from night 1, since I didn’t take systematic logs.
Observing — Night 2:
1.
All we were able to see of this barred ring galaxy was a bright region stacked on top of a faint halo below it.
2.
Distorted inner halo, elongated elliptically.
Faint, irregular outer halo.
Some sensation of a stellaring in the center.
3. NGC 6365 [
Although this looks like an overlap, SIMBAD claims this is an interacting pair and the redshifts seem to be similar.
At 100x (20mm Pentax XW), NGC 6365A (14.3mag) is pretty faint
At 205x (10mm Delos), I had several pops of NGC 6365B (15.7mag). NGC 6365A is a fairly uniform circular glow.
At 290x (7mm Nagler), One can sense that the core of NGC 6365B is separated from NGC 6365A
So overall, we extracted most of the features in this object as seen on the POSS plate.
4.
Slightly asymmetric edge-on, tapered on one side and fluffier on the other.
5.
Very beautiful! Can sense the dust lane.
6.
Pair of edge-on galaxies, one much brighter than the other. Brighter one has a very well-defined core.
7.
This compact group has 4 members, all four of which we could observe. The faint edge-one PGC 63749 (B=15.85) was the hardest.
And now for my highlight observation of the nights:
8.
Mark Wagner coined the term “Lumpy Darkness” to describe a t
We observed this cluster after culmination, at about 60 degree altitude (airmass ~1.1). Under these conditions, Jimi and I had no trouble seeing the cluster -- it might be better described as “Lumpy Brightness”! There were galaxies popping in-and-out of view as is typical in larger aperture scopes, but the 4 brightest galaxies could be held intermittently for longer durations with averted vision (est. 70~80% holding if one tried to). Using a correctly-oriented POSS I image from MegaStar as reference, Jimi counted 10 galaxies and I too identified 10 (± 2) galaxies [I admit some error into the observation, because as anyone who has tried to ID galaxies in this cluster knows, it’s extremely hard to keep track of all the galaxies popping in and out of view]. I initially thought I had 12, but two of the objects I thought were galaxies turned out to be stars. Translating from my rough sketch of the position of various galaxy cores, here is a list of galaxies identified:
The central brightest 4 galaxies:
PGC 54888, PGC 54883: The cD galaxies of the cluster. It was easy to see them as one blob, but it took some extra effort to resolve them into two cores. (Sloan puts these at V ~ 15.9, 15.7)
PGC 54876 (V ~ 15.5)
PGC 54884 (V ~ 16.2)
The rest:
PGC 54869 and SDSS J152218.16+274259.0: I did not resolve this pair, but the combined light from the pair was seen as an elongated glow.
PGC 54867 (V ~ 16.3)
PGC 54870 (V ~ 16.0)
PGC 54875 (V ~ 16.0)
PGC 1815633 (V ~ 16.9). The visual mag of this makes me wonder if I was seeing the combined light from the tight grouping.
PGC 54891 (V ~ 15.7): Possibly seeing the combined light from the neighboring edge-on and this galaxy.
Double star:
PGC 1816284: Turns out this is a tight double-star, per the SDSS imagery. SIMBAD has it marked as a galaxy, and it also has a LEDA designation!
Conclusions:
Typically, we note that night-sky quality varies from night-to-night and really good nights are generally rare. Having two consecutive great nights at this location makes me wonder if we were seeing the “average” night-sky for this location and not the best that it has to offer. In any case, this location is exceptional, and I would love to keep going back.