Gouldsboro
Gouldsboro by kyphoron, on FlickrStellafane
Stellafane by kyphoron, on FlickrI also want to thank Ryan R. and Miguel G. for convoying the 5+ hours to Gouldsboro with me. Both are fellow astronomers and Ryan has a 25" Obsession Dob which is a monster and Miguel brought his orange tube C11. I wasn't going to go because the observing looked to be gloomy because of the smoke plumes. But Ryan convinced me that it was going to clear up and he already had his trailer packed. So we met at Smithfield four corners and headed up to Maine. Traffic was light and we made good time arriving at 3pm. We were greeted with bright blue skies. So we setup and then all crashed in my sisters guest house (a converted garage)
Night came and it was absolutely spectacular. I had only seen more stars in the sky when I went to Arizona. The milky way was like you see in pictures because you are looking to the south over the ocean with the central bulge obscuring the constellations. These are some of the highlights from the weekend.
M31 with G1 Andromeda was incredible in my 16 inch spanning a greater view than my lowest power eyepiece. It wasn't hard finding G1 or as most call it the Micky Mouse cluster, because two stars in our galaxy make up the ears and G1 makes his face. Now I looked at Andromeda in the 25 inch and I almost fell off the ladder. You can visually see the dust lane spirals in the 25 inch and the view is blinding.
M13 Again, absolutely stunning in my 16" from a dark site but in the 25" this thing was jaw dropping. You could resolve stars right to the center of it. The colors of the stars just popped out making it look like a Hubble image.
M57 with IC 1296 For the first time I was able to resolve the central star in M57 visually and a neighboring galaxy IC 1296 in the 16". In the 25" IC 1296 was a barred spiral face on with two spiral arms. Seeing the central star in M57 with the 25" was a piece of cake with a hint of color in the ring.
Mars I didn't even try mars in my scope, we jumped right to the 25" and we were not disappointed. We could see a hint of a polar ice cap and a bit of blue indicating a slight atmosphere. Marian details were very visible with a lot of dark regions.
M33 This blew my mind. I was looking towards the constellation Andromeda when it was higher up in the sky and I noticed to the south that I could see a smudge. Then I realized I was looking at the constellation Triangulum and that I was looking at M33 naked eye. I swung my scope over to it and was observing M33 like I would normally in my scope, except I was doing it in my 8x50 finder scope. In the 16" I was resolving knots and globs in the galaxy and I don't even need to tell you what this looked like in the 25".
M45 Yes I know its not what most would call a highlight, but when you can see nebulosity covering the whole cluster giving it a eerie blue white glow then I think it makes it a highlight. It the 25" it appeared as strands of nebulosity. Pretty amazing.
B33 THE HORSEHEAD!!!! This object has been on my bucket list since I started in astronomy. I have tried viewing it visually from my house, Stellafane, CSP, Arunah Hill and Destruction Brook and have been disappointed each time. I knew I had a chance when with the H-Beta filter I could see the flame nebula which I had never observed before. Keeping Alnitak out of the FOV I was able to get a slight hint of it seeing the shape with averted vision. It was confirmed by both Ryan and Miguel. In the 25" with the H-Beta filter it stuck out like a sore thumb visually.
Those were the highlights of two days of observing from Gouldsboro Maine. It was very cold with temps dropping into the 30's the first night and the upper 20's the second night. We observed till dawn both nights occasionally going into the guest house to warm up and get some hot chocolate. We of course observed social distancing and when looking in someone else scope we used our own EP's and wore latex gloves and mask.
