A Quantum Diaries Survivor

No, not a party with George Clooney or Demi Moore. I am talking about real stars here… Those you only get to see light years away. 

Yesterday evening I left home at 8PM, and went to Spinea, where I finally met Mauro da Lio. I had been talking to him on internet forums and over the phone for over a month, but had never had the pleasure to meet him in person yet.

He is a Professor of Mechanics in Trento, where he is the Director of the department of Engineering of the University. Young for his position. But to me he is mostly an amateur astronomer as myself, and a member of the elite of those who have large toys to deploy at star parties… Large dobsonian reflectors, that is. I am on a waiting list for membership of that elite right now….

We left Spinea at 9PM after loading the trunk of my Mazda with his 16" newtonian reflector, cases of eyepieces, and accompanying equipment. After a hour drive we got to Rifugio Dolada, a nice observing place in the Alps, at 4500 feet in a dark site. The sky was very dark and there was a good seeing. We met Mirko there, another amateur, who had already deployed his 10" Newtonian on the parking lot. Snow on the ground, 3 degrees celsius. No wind.

Mounting the dob was really easy, as well as collimating it. The problem was to be patient and wait for the mirror to cool down - until it does, stars will look like balls at high magnifications, due to thermal instabilities on the mirror surface.

I mounted my 25×100 binoculars on Mauro's tripod and started looking at a few galaxies. Pretty nice sight of tens of small galaxies, 20 to 50 million light years away, in the Virgo cluster. In the meantime, Mirko framed 73P, a faint comet visible in Corona Borealis. Very bright in his scope, with the Hyperion 13mm eyepiece I had brought for testing. It showed a 15' tail. A pretty view. Later, we were able to find two more fragments of the comet, the third with some difficulty - it was quoted at a prohibitive Mv=15.5 visual magnitude, but we saw it in the 16" dob: it must have been not fainter than 15.0, since the limit we estimated by counting tiny specks of light around M57 was Mv=15.7 on Mauro's dob.

As the large dob was getting ready, we started getting unbelievable views of many bright objects. We looked at tens of galaxies, but the two that will give me a warm feeling for weeks to come were M51 and NGC4565.

The first is a spiral galaxy seen head on with a bright companion (see pic below). The amount of detail visible in the two turns of arms and in the companion, NGC5195, was astounding at high magnification. We stared at it for minutes with several different eyepieces. It was like being there.

The second is a spiral galaxy seen from a side. It is like a very narrow, long fuse of light with a bright core and a dark band of obscure matter running all the way in the middle. At 150x magnification it ran from one side to the other of the field of view, so bright and impressive it seemed to break the eyepiece in two.

We saw tens of galaxies in the virgo-coma cluster, several planetaries, and two bright globulars, M13 and M92. For the first time in my life could I see stars in M13 all the way to the core, and I saw the companion galaxy to M13, NGC6207, which shines at Mv=12.3.

Then Jupiter became high enough in the sky, and the mirror stabilized well enough, to allow for calm views of the giant. I could see delicate colors in the banding on the surface of the planet, a large festoon spanning almost 5 arcseconds in the center of the disk at 500x, and the satellites were pretty disks around the planet. A gorgeous sight, during the few seconds every minute when the atmosphere stability allowed the resolution to reach the limit of the instrument.

I had a chance to test my three new eyepieces, which I have bought in advance while I am waiting for the dob to arrive. The 27mm Tele Vue Panoptic, which gave a 1 degree field of view in the 16" dob, was impressive. Pinpoint stars to the edge of the field of view, and very sharp. I could see a dozen galaxies together in the Virgo cluster. What an orgy of celestial bodies!

The 13mm Hyperion was also a great performer. Mirko used it for most of the night on his 10" newtonian, and it gave bright views of the comet and of the galaxies we looked at. I am pleased of that eyepiece as well.

The 8mm plossl, again a Tele Vue, has a very small objective lens, and although very sharp, it did not convince me too much. I will use it on the moon and planets, but objectively I am more for longer focal lenght eyepieces, or ones with a better eye relief and larger objective lens.

All in all, it was a delightful night. We called it as such at 3PM, and by 4.40 I was back home, even more impatient for the new dob than I was before, if possible…