Observing Notesfrom the Tuckahoe IrregularsSeptember 5: I took delivery of my new Meade LXD-55 10" F-4.5 scope August 26. Never mind that the summer of 2002 is one of the hottest and driest on record for Delaware - this new scope came guaranteed to be a drought breaker and monsoon maker. Yes, it started raining on the home and rained or was cloudy for nine straight days. So, on September 5th, as the sun set in a clear sky, I was determined to see some stars with the new scope. A combination of operator's manual reading, entertaining the T-hoe mosquito, twisting my body into some unnatural positions to "align" the scope, a tripod that was too short, and drives that refused to work, convinced me that I should pack up early and try again at a later date. So I packed up the scope and went home early - disgusting! The scope is on it's way to Meade. September 6: September 6 was Friday and our regular dark sky observing night. I worked late and arrived home with a headache. I decided to attend the observing session with just a pair of 7X50 binos. There were twenty plus people there when I arrived - the observing field was abuzz with scopes, astro-talk, and the T-hoe mosquitoe's family reunion. The sun set clear and the sky was transparent and dark. I looked through Norman Todd's new 20" Obsession and Doug Norton's Televue refractor. By this time my headache was beginning to be a real problem so I retreated to my truck for some shuteye. About an hour later Jim Acker and Lyle Jones stopped by - we talked for a while and I decided I would depart for home. Headaches are a pain in the &^%$#@!! September 7: Well, the weather held out for Saturday, September 7. So, late in the afternoon I hitched up the trailer and made my way to T-hoe for the 3rd night in a row. I arrived about 7:00 PM and was in the process of setting up the 25 inch Obsession when Tim Milligan appeared with his 17.5 incher. Not long after that another Gazer showed up, John is all I remember - then Doug and Billie Norton, Terry Young, and Steve Long came in by the time it was dark. The sky was steady and transparent; the stars were pinpoints in the 25" Obsession - must have done a good collimation! I was doing my normal sky tour for a couple staying in the park when someone shouted to look at the northern sky. There was a beautiful aurora in progress! Nice spires and spikes - all reddish against the dark northern sky! I rushed to the van for my cameras and tripod. Mentally I checked off the settings on the Minolta X700 - B, full aperture, focus at infinity, cable release, no filters, 400 speed film, approximately 30 sec exposures would do just fine…this was a different camera from my favorite Nikon F2 so I checked everything again. The first two exposures were duds - I had moved the shutter speed from B to 1 sec while switching the camera on. The next exposure was 30 secs - so at least I had one aurora in the canister. I did this approximately 15 times and decided to finish the roll of film in my Mamiya 645 camera. Same routine: infinity focus, max aperture, cable release, Bulb shutter, mount camera on tripod. And then I discovered I had finished the roll of slide film during our trip to West Virginia in July. So I switched back to the 35mm Minolta and then discovered I had been using a 50mm lens vs the 28mm. By the time I swapped lenses and sqoze off a couple of exposures the nice red spikes became a dull glow - the aurora was subsiding. All this time the small group of aurora-gazing-Gazers received an extended lesson in solar particle/upper Earth atmosphere interactions from Gazer Steve Long. What a beautiful sight on a beautiful night! Good people, nice night, the T-hoe mosquito had retreated to warmer environs, and a nice aurora that knew when to leave so that we could return to star gazing. The next treats I wanted to see were Saturn and Great Orion Nebula. I retired to the trailer for forty winks while Saturn and the Nebula rose to a decent observing height. By 3:00 AM, both were well above the horizon and I did the dew removal routine on my secondary, finder scope, red-dot, etc. Calm, dark sky, fifty-five degrees F, big scope, Nagler eyepieces, Saturn and the Great Nebula forty-five degrees above the horizon and in the east-southeast…it just doesn't get any better. I found myself returning again and again to get another view of them (I DID look at other objects). Saturn has such a distinct and lustrous yellow color - speaking of color, the Great Nebula's wispy-ness trailed off into shades of green and took all the power I could create. Tim, John, and I viewed until the east began to lighten with the "crack of dawn". What a night! It took three nights in a row but the third one was definitely worth the effort. Don Surles |