Observing at Cat's Meow Star Field

What a fantastic night I had on Friday evening and Saturday morning!

At Hunter Scott's invitation, I drove up to his place on Friday afternoon for a night of Messier Marathon practice. I knew the moon would be up until about 11PM, but most of what I wanted to observe was going to be up after midnight.

Despite his commitments to his arriving overnight guests, Hunter took time out of his late afternoon to show me the observing field and make me feel welcome. Ron Weber had also given me permission to use his trailer on this cold night. My intent was to outdoor camp, but it was nice to know that I had an escape plan if I started to get cold on a night that was forecast to drop to the mid 20s.

I found a great place to hang my hammock 20 yards off the end of Ron's camper between two oak trees. First dibs claimed on this place during the club Messier Marathon in March! It was a great place to get some shut eye on and off through the night.

I also took a long walk around the star field, judging how high the trees were above the horizon. I took a look at a far corner of the property, where Hunter said he may put an observatory one day. In the end, I chose a spot closer to the center of the star field. I set up my Orion XT10 and parked my truck with the tailgate near the scope to work as an observing table. I put the cover over the scope to keep dew and birds off the optics.

The sun was still up as I cooked my noodle dinner on the picnic table and settled down for a winter's nap about 5 PM. The sun was still up, but trees shaded my camping spot and I had not had an afternoon nap. So I was able to get right to sleep.

I woke at about 0130 Zulu time (730 PM) with the moon still way above the horizon. I spent a few minutes planning how to find the Andromeda galaxy and a few other early marathon objects only using landmarks over these objects. (I usually use the great square of Pegasus to find the Andromeda Galaxy, and instead found a way to use Perseus and Algol to point to the Andromeda and M33 pointers.) After a half hour of goofing around with these, I went back to bed.

My next observing session began about 0545 Z and lasted until about 0730. The temperature had dropped to about 30, but fortunately there was no wind. The sky was in perfect shape with no clouds and very easy magnitude 6 viewing. The eastern light domes were all very small and easy to deal with. The western constellations were just about where they will be at the beginning of the marathon. Even though it was about midnight local time, I could not see M74 or M77 through the thick atmosphere, despite knowing that I was looking at exactly the right spot. (I had seen them earlier at my evening observing session.) M31, M32, M110, and M33 were all easy. I began working my way through the evening MM list and had no difficulty with the CAS objects, the objects near ORI, TAU, GEM, and AUR.

The open clusters of CMA and MON worked out very well. I had puzzled through them at Garner SP the week before. I forgot M48 when I thought it was part of the M46-47 group. That was the only object on the list that I should have easily been able to find and did not log for the night.

For the second time, I used a dictaphone recorder to do logging. It was much easier than trying to write my observations, especially in getting details down about objects.

By the time I had gotten to this point, my toes were pretty cold and I wanted to wait until UMA and LEO were further up in the sky to continue. So I set an alarm for 3:30 AM local time and laid back down in my hammock for another winter nap. It took a long time to warm my feet up in the sleeping bag as it was about 28 degrees. My set up was plenty warm for sleeping, but rewarming was not easy. I found myself warm in my core, but my feet stayed cold. I even took my socks off and used my legs to warm my toes. Any way, by the time my alarm went off I was toasty warm and ready to get up and see more stars. But for some additional help with warming, I turned on the gas heater in Ron's trailer before starting the next session which lasted an additional two hours.

This session was from 0930Z to 1130Z. During that time, the largest part of the observing was of faint galaxies. Before starting the galaxy sweep I warmed up with the two open clusters in CAN. Then I went to the faint fuzzies with with the LEO quintuplet and then moved on to the 12 Messier objects in the big dipper and CVN. All but M40 are galaxies. BOO next got my attention with its trio of objects, and the globular clusters M3 and M53 were a little odd after all those faint fuzzy galaxies.

Of the 19 objects in the VIR, COM and HYA area, only one is a globular cluster. Using the excellent eyepiece charts by Rob Hawley, I was able to make my way through the Virgo cluster of galaxies another time without a hitch.

THen I picked up the "early summer objects" that I could - including M13, M93, M5, M12, M10, M14, M57, M58, M29, M39, M80, M4, and M107. By then I was cold again and I retreated to the trailer to warm my toes next to the hot air vent for about 20 minutes.

Dawn was approaching, as I could see the sky beginning to get lighter in the east at 1200Z. In my rush, I tried to see what else I might be able to see. I picked up M27 and M71 through a break in the tree line. M19, M62, M6, M7 (in the tree line) M8, M20, M21 were seen with binoculars. as I hurried the last few minutes of reasonable seeing. I could have seen M23, M24, M16, M26 and M11 if I had not been so time pressed with the dawn. And so it finally was over.

I ended up seeing 90 Messier objects, none of which were new for me, but 14 objects that I saw with binoculars were new on that list. I now have well over the necessary 50 binocular messier objects to apply for that Astronomical League pin.

I retired to sleep another couple hours until the sun was lighting the whole world all around me. It was about 8 AM.

Then it was just a matter of packing up. I turned off the gas and the thermostat in Ron's trailer, packed up my camping gear and scope, and as quietly as I could I drove out Hunter's front gate. In Fredericksburg, I stopped for some coffee and breakfast and then drove home for a hot shower.

Fun? You bet! Rewarding? Oh yes!.

Again many many thanks to both Hunter and Ron for their invitations. I hope I left everything pristine and looking like I had never been there. I want to get another invitation after all.

Dark Skies,

Risk