36" First Light as a Transit Scope (no Rocker Box) for focus check, 3/31/07. Object: 64 Aurigae.

Don helped me with getting the secondary cage bolted into place after using a 19' scissor-jack as a Hi-Lo. Seeing it focus as expected was a relief. 64 Aurigae just happen to be crossing the fov and had an identifiable asterism close to track it down in TheSky6.

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36" First Light - Overgaard, Arizona at 6800' elevation occurred on 5/09/07. Object: Abell 2065, the Corona Borealis Galaxy Cluster.

19 galaxies were direct vision with 20 more suspected as being the cores of galaxies (not as sharp as stars), for a total of 39.

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Overgaard Star Party was on 5/10-15/07. Ron, John, and I attended.

We had a blast. Some highlights are:

M17 had very delicate black dust streaks across the nebulous parts. It did not look like the Swan anymore.

M13 was so bright with its chains of stars it looked like a 4th of July firework....

Centaurus A also had enormous amount of detail in the black dust clouds across the face of the galaxy.

M51 in Canes Venatici using the bino-viewer at 192x, with the galaxy nearly straight overhead, had incredible detail in the spiral arms with a complete bridge to the companion galaxy and intricate dust streaks across the face of each.

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Of all the pictures on the web, the photo below best portrays the color visible in Comet Holmes as it appeared in the eyepiece of the 36" on 11/10/07 (using a Paracorr and a 31mm Nagler).

Photo credit: Ken Tydeck.

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11/10/07.

M31... Golden orange core. My fov is ~1/2 degree in 31 Nagler and the entire field is orange with fine black cirrus dust lanes hanging, suspended. Within spiral arms, many stellar associations resolved into individual stars. The black cirrus dust lanes visible even on the backside of M31, making a complete circle around core region.

NGC 7662 'Blue Snowball'. Using 20 Nagler and inner irregular ring visible elongated E-W with outer halo appearing mottled. Very intense blue color.

M76 Peanut-shaped, obvious cusps on NW curving E and SE curving W. Both outer lobes full and complete, direct vision. Apple Nebula, not Apple Core Nebula, as the full lobes on each side are direct vision.

NGC 7635 'Bubble Nebula'. 170 degree thick arc surrounding a star without any filter, with faint remaining portion seen for full oblong ring. With OIII, second arc outside first is seen on the same side plus other detailed nebulosity filling fov.

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12/02/07.

M1 Crab nebula. 31N, 16N, and 9N eyepieces. Incredible amount of filaments visible showing detail.

Simeis 147, Sharpless 2-240. Very unusual object, good detail, huge. 31Nagler gives ~1/2 degree fov and many full fov's don't cover the entire object. A mix of detail-containing grey filaments fill each fov, plus black filaments that block stars causing 'voids'. Stars seen between the black filaments, outlining them.

B33 'Horsehead Nebula'. Direct vision, fine detail visible in 'mane'.

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