Fog? - no thanks!

Hi folks!

Due to several painful circumstances i am awake right now and cannot get a wink of sleep. It´s 4 o´clock a.m. In Germany right now... So what to do? I decided to translate an observation report of mine – about my last trip in the bavarian mountains – at 4500 feet. So please be patient with my typing... there will be awfully lots of mistakes for sure - and in the end i will be too tired to kill them all ;-)

So overhere we had some kind of little „goodweather-catastrophe“, somehing all of you in Texas and around are having each night ;-)

So i make it quite a bit shorter than in german.. Forecasts predicted around 40% air-humidity at my site – the night before still 60%. So i went for the lower one ;-) But that meant to sacrifice one day of vacation. However – i did need to go by train first for one hour straight into the mountains. Here in Germany we often have typical inversion-conditions, that means: high fog in lower altitudes and sunshine above it at appr. 4000 ft. So my trip started within the greyest grey u can imagine – mixed up with exhausting fumes, cigarette-smoke and anything else what and the taxi-driver that brought me to the cable car station asked me if i was sure to see any star... Of course i was! My weapon: webcams! Before i left the webcams were showing me a carpet of soft dense clouds – and dazzling sun above.
There was a little danger of high clouds that night – but it was just the last very good chance for a long night before moon disturbes too much. When i arrived – some of them were still to see and covered the blue sky to some extend. But i was looking forward to that night and expected the best :-)

The cable car lifted me up more and more and the grey of the sky turned into blue – quite gradually – not suddenly. At one point i realized: hey man – i am above the clouds! Always quite an experience...



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I reached the mountain station on top – just 5-10 Minutes left to reach the very Top by feet. No problem – snow has not been too much at that time. I was just in time to relish the last rays of sunlight – just vanishing behind germanys highest mountain – the „Zugspitze“.

http://www.bilder-upload.eu/thumb/839c73-1481201677.jpg

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I was exited: my very first night that took place above the fog from the very beginning of an observing night... from the beginning lights on the ground would be puffered and covered... and would let the sky shine in its darkest, most sparkling kind – down to horizon... wow. Foks – i really was excited.

The plan

Moon should vanish at 9 p.m. My Dob was ready to go at 5 a.m. What to do with all that time?
Taking pictures, observing moon... and: check out the blazar! With around 13m0 no big deal with 12“ - moonlight or not. There is already a thread to that object – so i can shorten up here :-) Some other event i checket out: Gaja16aye – a microlensing event that occured a few days before, where a star passing 2 stars got enforced , the 15mag-star brightend to 13 mag. I was lucky to see this event...This night i just checked – if the star really disappeared – it did. So now this observation was complete for me – really a strange thing – i never would have thought beeing able to observe such effects Einstein was describing! Awesome...
But these observations during moonlight were just one step to real deepsky. To use time properly i took pictures as much as i could – the scenes where just too beautiful...

Deepsky-Plans where focussed on the superthin-galaxies. My big project, to get as much as i can of a list with 133 members. I will make it short:
I checked out:

NGC 1163 – 14m7 - easy to find with 13mm - Ethos– although i forgot DSS-print: easy spindle, seemed to have a thicker longer centre, best view in 8mm.

NGC 1247 - 13m7 - very easy, nice spindle – even in 26mm-eyepiece easy as fine streak

PGC 13646 - 14m5 - this galaxy relatively easy, orientation/ position angle good to observe – but far more interesting is nearby NGC 1421: wow – what a big streak! With quite some Detail, but hard to fix.

UGC 2092 - 15m0 - hard stuff. Really hard. Had already one attempt at better site – without success. But this time, after around 45 minutes, i could safely detect a weak nebula at correct place and in correct position angle. In 13mm-Exepiece a bit easier than in 8mm.

UGC 3137 - 13m8 - really tough too: with 8mm finally safely detected; star at the end.

UGC 3326 14m4 - again i forgot DSS-print here. Yet i could find the galaxy with my note in the Oculum DeepSkyAtlas at correct position. Correct postion is so important – u cannot emphasize that enough. All in all of medium difficulty, very elongated.

Boys – it was cold. Just 2 Degrees below Zero but cold. I have been equipped to Minus 10 but i was cold. I am gettin old. I was hungry too. My cucumber was frozen: not a joy to bite – believe me. I aksed myself what´s more horrible: visit at the dentist or eating a frozen cucumber.
I tried to get warm again by several crazy sports-activities and eating chocolate-bars.

But sky was great: NELM 7m0+

Venus just at the rim of the "Zugspitze"

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Venus vanished:

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First 3 hours of no wind. Rare joy in the mountains! But then it came. Immediately it felt like somethin around Minus 10 Degrees. My Dob kissed the ground – damned – my collimation! But it hold! Wow – i couldn believe that it hold. So i continued – holding the Dobson storng against my knees und pulling it towards me – so picture was stable enough. By this i tried to detect another superthin: UGC 2411. without success. Two very nasty stars at the end of this galaxy disturb the view horribly. No chance for me.

There are some other objects of course i tried: there is a nice constellation in aries, whre NGC 877 and 871 form a rectangle with too stars. At 877 another NGC is hidden – NGC 876, a longish little galaxie i saw at DSS and wanted to try. After a while i catched it. Not very easy but not too hard as well with its 14m7 (surface brightness 14m4).
I tried to catch some Detail in NGC 7570 – but the barred spiral was simply out of reach with my scope. Surprisingly dim – although 13m2 bright.
Next stop: NGC 1530, another spiral. I havnt had in miind waht to look for and what to expect: so i made a strange sketch – far away from what the galaxy really is like :-)) I thought of a galaxy pair or somethin...
Arp 304 was much more easier: NGC 1241 and 1242 where easy to see – nicely arranged with some brighter stars.

Fine sky:

http://www.bilder-upload.eu/thumb/3483cc-1481199299.jpg

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Enough of faint fuzzies. Lets go for somethin bright! M 51 showed a bright spiral, even M 81 easily showed its two spiral arms – at first glance! Wow. These views i needed. After such faint stuff – just a joy.

My site in front of earth shadow:

http://www.bilder-upload.eu/thumb/24b4c7-1481199218.jpg

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Now i am getting tired... hope you enjoyed my trip as i did...

CS!
Norman

Thanks for your report Norman, and for taking the time to translate from your original report in German.

I felt like I was right there with you. Sometimes the cold makes us suffer a little for our views but it always seems worth it, especially when the sky gets out of the way! Also, I think I'd prefer the chocolate bar over the cucumber even if it wasn't frozen, but that's just me 8:)

I'm interested in your sketch of NGC 1530. I've only seen it in Jimi's 48 inch scope so I have no idea how it looks in smaller scopes yet.

By the way, most of your photos didn't come through - I can see only the first and last ones.

Hi Howard,

thank you very much for your kind reply :-) And thanks for your hint at the problem with the pics - strange - i myself see no problem at all - maybe in your country there is some blocking of the EU-site, where i uploaded the panoramas... So i changed the original post/ added the panoramas with DSF-intern uploads.

Thank you very much as well for your interest in my sketch of NGC 1530. But it´s kind of an embarrassing result ;-) So here you go, the completely unprocessed sketch from the field...

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I cannot remember exactly how i made it - eye at the eyepiece or a few minutes/ seconds afterwards with view in mind... Really don´t know. I do not even know, if i saw the two stars between the galaxy and the bright star - or i just saw one... I will have to revisit it :D

Clear Skies!
Norman

I can see the other photos now, and am drooling over the night sky you had - beautiful! I see what you mean about your 1530 sketch, but sometimes my quick sketches leave me wondering what the heck I saw too.

Hi Howard,

indeed - sky was just beautiful :-) Btw: the cucumber i am only eating together with some bread - not pure ;-)

sketch of 1530: :D ... but one thing was good to see in the eyepiece: the wavy structure which was the southern edge of the bar...

CS!
Norman

A great report Norman! It was a joy to read it.
This foggy weather is very common here in Hungary as well. In fact we are having it right now. As I see the webcam images it's totally clear a couple of hundred meters above us.

Thank you very much Peter, nice to read :-)

CS
Norman