This is T. Roach coming to you from far West Texas

tiger roach

Urban Bovine Knievel
Just arrived in Marathon in the Big Bend area, fully laden with the 14" scope. The weather looks good for all four nights we will be here so hopefully I'll have good observing reports soon.

The weird thing is, it doesn't get fully dark here this time of year until like 10:30. So I guess I have time to rest up from the long drive.

Pics to come later...
 
Beautiful country out there. Make sure you head over to Fort Stockton to get a picture of Paisano Pete, the giant roadrunner statue.
 
Beautiful country out there. Make sure you head over to Fort Stockton to get a picture of Paisano Pete, the giant roadrunner statue.

We just drove by Pete a couple of hours ago. :cool:

I haven't been out here in years, and didn't realize how much I missed it.
 
Be sure to shine a flashlight toward the folks at the Marfa lights viewing stand a few times so they'll have something to look at.
 
We just drove by Pete a couple of hours ago. :cool:

I haven't been out here in years, and didn't realize how much I missed it.

I miss it, too.

Well, you can always stop by Terlingua and see if they have any Jerry Jeff Walker on the jukebox.
 
Well, last night rocked. Got to know the owner of this place; he is an enthusiastic guy working hard to make a nice astronomy haven here. Also got some views through the 24" scope they have.

We just stuck with obvious objects last night; M51 and the Trifid were my favorite moments. Tonight will delve deeper.
 
OK, here is all I've come up with for pics so far: :facepalm:



The problem with scopes is they only come out at night... This afternoon I'll get some shots of the "town" and surrounding desolation with the real camera.
 
And BTW last night was epic. Crystal clear and steady seeing. The theme was "cool planetary nebulae" including the Bug Nebula, Cat's Paw, Cat's Eye and Helix. The Cat's Eye was our favorite - obviously it doesn't look like the Hubble pics but you could see a surprising amount of detail, and the central star was a cinch.

Feeling pretty astronomically sated at this point. Tonight we will just do a couple hours of casual observing since we have a long drive tomorrow, and we want to drink a little this afternoon, heh heh.
 
WAIT THERE'S MORE - cool story I want to share:

The first night I realized that the battery to illuminate the crosshairs in my finder scope was dead, and it was really holding me back on the tougher star hops. (They are little camera batteries, the kind of thing you aren't going to find at the little store here in town). Last night when we arrived at the scope to get started, I saw an envelope stuck to it. It was from Danny, the owner of this place. He had found some new batteries for me. :cool:

It really helped, too. Thu night I struggled for a long time to find the Bug Nebula and failed. Last night with the crosshairs I nailed it right off the bat.
 
OK - photos - well TBH I didn't take all that many. Because most of the time that wasn't spent in the dark observing, I was asleep or useless. But here are the best of what I got:

From the Marathon Motel, right by our observing area:



From McDonald Observatory:



Also from the observatory:



The dome housing the Hobby-Eberly Telescope:

 
Beautiful country. Looks like it would be a lot of fun to go biking out there.

You do see some bikers out there. Highway 118 between I-10 and Fort Davis is my pick for most scenic stretch of road in Texas.
 
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OK, I'd like to add one observation to this thread, then I'll let it die a natural death. :)

This one kind of illustrates why I like using a beefy scope under dark skies so much...

After observing M101 and M102, I noticed a cluster of smaller galaxies on the star atlas lying just to the ENE in Draco and decided to have a look. Turns out a number of them were plenty bright enough to see really well at around 11th magnitude. I was kind of hopping from one to the next when I came upon NGC 5907, which turns out to be a dramatically thin edge-on galaxy. It was a long, misty sliver in the eyepiece, with a hint of a dust lane.

It is so cool to find something like that that I didn't even know existed previously - definitely my favorite find of the trip (although the Cat's Eye Nebula was a close second).

Here is an excellent sketch (not mine) that I found to give an idea what it looks like in the eyepiece:

NGC-5907-baneg.jpg


http://www.asod.info/?p=11697
 
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