A pleasing sky refresher

South Texas has been under almost constant threat of rain since mid-winter. My plan to keep up with the Hershel List fell short in January and I have been clouded out more times than I can count since then.There have been very few clear nights in the favorable window for deep sky objects when the moon is not washing out the black sky.

All of this weather wash out has occurred while I simultaneously searched for a small piece of dark sky property. In January, I thought I had found just the piece I wanted. But there were a couple problems I could not get worked out and that fell through. A second slice of dark sky property fell into my lap in the intervening months, and Diane and I now have a little camping spot with a water spigot 75 air miles west of the edge of San Antonio.

The last two weekends I have camped at the ranch star field and have been able to get about an hour of observing in each of the weekends. The first weekend was cut short by the moon rising a little before midnight. The second was cut short by a quickly developing haze which opacified Into a solid cloud deck.

I was joined the first weekend by my friend Matt. As we sat around waiting for the sky to turn dark, and the few clouds to evaporate, we began to find the bright planets as they popped out of the evening sky. Venus was first and she made a good target to refine the aiming of our TelRad finders and finder scopes.

Each of us has a severely modified 16 inch Dob that started life as a Meade Lightbridge. The scopes have moved down paths away from the original version according to our individual tastes.

Soon Saturn was visible and showed us that seeing was very good indeed. High power (in my case, a 10mm Radian eyepiece on the 1800 mm scope) resulted in a crystal clear image of the rings and the dark line of their shadow on the southern side of the rings. 5 moons were easily visible, three dimmer moons to the west, and bright Titian and an out-of-plane moon to the east.

After just a little while longer, the field stars of the major constellations became visible and we started our search for Messier objects. M13 in HER looked for all the world like a pile of salt on dark paper. That led me to think about Omega CEN which was visible in break in the trees to the south.

We tracked down 6 galaxies from UMA and CVN, Messier objects 51, 101, 81, 82, 63, 94. The last two were a memory stretch for me and I found myself pulling out my StarmapPro to find them in the big black sky.

About that time, friends who were spending the holiday weekend on their own property in the country arrived for a little star party. For the next 3/4 of an hour we were able to share our recent familiarization of these objects with folks that appreciate the sky but don't yet know their own way around in it very well.

After those friends left, Matt and I sat down in lounge chairs while the moon began to lighten the sky. He remarked how it was nice to become familiar with the summer sky again. I agreed. It was frightening how much of the summer sky I had forgotten, but it was nice to realize that it all came back quickly.

The following weekend, the Saturday night forecast was for severe clear, with the moon rising about 3 AM. Diane and I headed for the ranch star field with high hopes. However the closer we got, the more high cirrus developed.

The early evening was similar to the previous week, with Venus and Saturn stealing the show. I was able to share all the objects with Diane, that Matt and I had observed the previous week. She practiced finding them on her own.

It was about this time that I decided to take a look at the "Tonight" feature of the SkymapPro program. It was a good memory jogger for some very obvious Messier objects which I had forgotten. M3 and M5 are especially good summer targets with Arcturus overhead.

Unfortunately, just as I was getting into this as a technique for finding other less obvious targets, the stars began winking out due to clouds and my laser beam grew as fat as a telephone pole in the moisture near the ground.

This coming week is new moon, and I already have plans to continue my search for a clear dark sky. May it come quickly Lord!