Date: 2003/03/17-19
Time: Hours of Darkness
Location: Death Valley (Mesquite Springs), California
Altitude: ~1800 ft. ASL
Weather:
- Temperature = Mid 90’s – Lower 50’s
- Humidity = 10%
- Winds = W@ 4–25 & S@ 4-25mph
- Clouds = 6
- Transparency = 5/4
- Seeing = 5/4
- Darkness = 6
Moon Phase: 0%
Telescope: Meade 16” Starfinder Dobsonian, Orion XT10 SkyQuest & Orion AstroView 100mm

DAY ONE:

The day of our long awaited trip to Death Valley had finally arrived. Two months have passed since the last Dark Sky observing session and this would be the first with my new “toys”. The days prior to leaving were indeed hectic to say the least. I’ve moved my friends Desktop Publishing Company into my house that entailed many things which I will not discuss here.

The day started by packing up all the ‘scopes and camping gear into Terra, loading Sierra up and picking John up at school. We stopped at Wal-Mart for a few extra things, one which included a picnic table shelter (which we later found [but knew] would be a stroke of genius as well as an [unforeseen] near disaster). We left town with clear skies, warm temperatures and the anticipation of three nights of prime observing in our minds.

We arrived at Mesquite Springs sometime around 5:30pm to find the campground not too terribly full. I had been hoping to find a certain campsite and was lucky enough to find space #10 open. We set up our tent and ‘scopes and by nightfall were observing.

Just as we started out the shrill yelp of friendly neighborhood Coyotes shattered the relatively peaceful calm of the evening. Their cries came mostly from the area towards the spring itself with return barks from the area to our southwest. I was surprised how close they were. I don’t think they were as close to us as they had been in Stoneman.

The campground was occupied mostly by people with RV’s. I’ll never understand why somebody would drive all the way to such a desolate, yet beautiful place as Death Valley only to remain inside their RV’s cooped up indoors watching TV. Their beams of florescent lighting were death to our eyes. Some people did have campfires which I can understand. I just wish they didn’t choose to burn either wet wood or wood that smelled like it had been treated with chemicals of some sort.

John spent most of the night grabbing needed objects from his DeepMap 600. I spent mine looking mostly at familiar objects. Of course, I could not resist repeated views of Orion through my new 2” EP! Yes, this was the time of year for a Messier Marathon but neither of us was too concerned about the contest. We did note that in dark skies some of the objects can be seen naked-eye. About 10:30 most of the RVer’s had gone to bed and with them their dreadful photons. A group of college students continued to party, fortunately for us they were a good distance away and only their reveling made the distance to our camp.

I spent most of the night trying to take some photos of DSO’s through the AstroView. The results that I was getting in the camera’s monitor showed promising results: especially of M42, M81/82 and M13. I tried for the Rosette but I’m sure it was too low and dim. Even in the 16” Starfinder with the SkyGlow filter attached the whole “Rose” could not be detected. The shot of M81 & M82 were the only one's that came out half decent.

Around midnight the wind started to kick up. John had been awake all day and decided to get to bed. Sierra stayed up with me and spent most of the night digging under a parking curb trying to get one of the little desert rats that had made his home under it. I noticed at this time of year not as many of them were scurrying around as they had been last October. At 2:30am the wind had picked up enough to turn the stars into bloated remnants of their true selves. I had managed to gather a few dismal galaxies mostly in the Southern sky. For the remainder of the evening I sat in my chair just looking up and the stars and enjoying the great expanse of sky this site offered. By 3:30am, Scorpius was well into the sky skirting his tail along the horizon. I waited for Cygnus and the Milky Way to become clear before I went to bed myself.

DAY TWO:

The sound of Sierra panting woke me up out of sleep. The heat came next and brought me fully awake. I hurried to the picnic table and quickly covered our cooler with tarps so they wouldn’t bake in the sun: more ice was a long way away. The wind from the previous night had died down while we were sleeping but had decided to return in the mid morning hours. Instead of from the North, the wind now blew from the Southwest. Our plan had been to set up the picnic tent over the sleeping tent to make shade and then move it over the picnic table during the day. John woke up and helped me set it up. Since we had planned to move it later, we did not stake it down. That was a big and nearly disastrous decision. As we sat in our chairs a slight gust of wind blew in and moved the picnic tent a few inches. Both John and I were surprised but didn’t think must of it. The next thing we knew as stronger gust blew in and before we could do anything about it, the wind picked up the tent and tossed it over: right on top of the AstroView. Luckily, its fall was broken by the Starfinders box I had been using for a desk. John quickly stood up but nothing could be done, the damage had already occurred. He turned around to look at me, I’m sure expecting me to be furious and all I could say was “that sucked”. The two of us managed to upright the picnic tent and set it back in place. This time we staked it down, and good. Upon inspection of the AstroView, I found minimal damage.

The side of the Solar Filter as well as my 40mm EP had gotten some scratches and dust on them but the major damage was to the tracking motor. The bracket that attached it to the mount was thoroughly bent. Luckily, I had my tools with me and was able to bend it back into its original shape. Lesson learned: stake down the darned thing the first time! Now the winds had shifted from the Southwest to West-North-West and with them, a few fair-weather clouds filled the sky. As the Sun crept its way Westward, John read a book in the shade of his “chair-brella” and I napped in the shade of the evil picnic tents shade occasionally having to move to escape the rays which had started to cook me.

During the day a couple of people, some from the nearby camps and some who had been passing by had stopped to look through the AstroView at the Sun. As the sun set over the Western Mountains, John made us an awesome diner of steak fillets. Most of the daytime clouds had departed but a few remained in the distance. While I was taking a picture of them I noticed a little rabbit sitting in the brush near our camp. I’m surprised Sierra didn’t see it first.

As if on queue, the Coyotes started their evening ruckus. I wondered if it wasn’t some recording the Park Rangers had planted in the trees just for ambiance! The old movie “West World” starring Yule Brenner came to mind.

With the setting of the Sun the winds departed and brought out another gorgeous night.

While we waited for the “City of Mesquite Springs” to go to sleep and dim the lights we showed off Jupiter and Saturn to a few people who had wandered up curious as to what we were doing. They were surprised to find that the ‘scopes belonged to us and not a school. Most of the people had never seen a ‘scope like the Starfinder and thought I surely must be doing some kind of research.

Sometime around 10:30 (that seems like “lights-out” time for most of the campers) the calm night was broken by the returning winds. Nevertheless, John and I began our “Sirius” hunting. John was bagging objects left and right and me without much luck. I was mostly searching for lesser then magnitude 12 galaxies. I did manage to find on in Orion which was a mag. 13.4 galaxy. The wind was just too strong making the seeing just bad enough not to be fun. John hit the hay around midnight and shortly thereafter I feel asleep in my camp chair wrapped up in my sleeping bag. Temperatures during the day had been in the mid 90’s but dropped to near 50 at night.

I woke in time to get a nice shot of Scorpius and the Milky Way (it's too big to post here) before dawn broke. I took a quick look at M4 before wrapping up the ‘scopes and falling to sleep. This time I slept not in the tent but on the ground behind my “desk” where the morning rays would not “cook” me. I managed to sleep until 9am before it got too hot.

DAY THREE:

The campground was quite the hub of activity today. Many people were coming in looking for a place to camp. Quite a few people stopped by our site wondering what all the ‘scopes were about. Most of them were happy to look through the AstroView at the Sun and said they would return when it got dark. Early afternoon brought clouds to the Southeast and along with them: wind.

The ASN-LV club and JC were going to Furnace Creek for their Messier Marathon and I wondered how their site would fair with the clouds. Somebody had told me that site was located near the Visitors Center and that it had more light-pollution then Mesquite Springs. I also wondered about my own club member’s way down in Sedona.

By the evening all the campsites were taken and the campground looked like a little Motor Home City. A lot of the campers had started campfires and the grounds filled with smoke. Of course, the wind had died down and for once I was wishing for just a little breeze to clear the smoke out. An interesting fellow from Pomona, California stopped by our camp and talked with us for quite some time. Tonight, the Park Ranger stopped by everybody’s camp to inform them that he would be having a “Campfire Lecture” tonight: something about “Nature in the Desert”. John and I chose to stay at our camp but many people filled by our site on their way to listen to the Ranger who had set up not too far from us.

After the Ranger’s lecture ended almost all of the people had to pass by our site to return to them. Many of then stopped at our site as promised to catch a look through our ‘scopes. Saturn was the most pleasing object for them. All in all, about 30 people had stopped by during the next couple of hours: some of them stayed quite long talking about all sorts of things. Having all these people hanging around reminded me of the Grand Canyon Star Party. The “Pomona Man” turned out to be quite the book of knowledge almost to the point of being scary! He was a strange character but no doubt, very intelligent in a savant sort of way.

Sometime around 10:30pm all our visitors cleared out as well as the fires died down and the RVer’s lights went out. Through one of the valley’s to the West and low to the horizon, John and I saw some very strange lights blinking off and on. They were orange in color and some of them hovered while others made little trails. They only lasted for about 45 seconds but long enough to make us wonder. We decided they must have been military airplanes way off over the interior of Nevada where they do things that are none of our business.

Once again, John was off looking for objects on his map and I to find fainter fuzzies that are only visible in my big ‘scope. The off-and-on winds had mercifully given us a break for the moment. My first object was The Ghost of Jupiter in Hydra. It was the best I’d ever seen it but could still not make out the central star. Hydra was fairly low in the sky and I noted how big the constellation really is. I found a couple of galaxies in the Virgo-Leo area that I had not seen before and then moved down to Corvus and its distinct shape. To me, it looks more like a “Sail” then a “Crow”. Sometime around midnight John retired for the night.

I really wanted to search the lower constellations that I normally can’t see but the sky was just too bad: the winds had picked up slightly enough to blur the sky. I choose to look overhead into Canes Venatici and then into Virgo. During the last year and a half I had missed M60 and tonight I made it a point to find it. It has a little “side-kick” galaxy next to it that reminded me of M51 and its “side-kick”.

Scorpius was once again stinging the horizon with its tail and the Milky Way starting to brighten. During the previous nights I had hoped for a look at Alpha-Omega: the gigantic globular in Centaurus. I could make out the brighter stars of the constellation riding just above the horizon and gave it a shot. Searching….searching…and there it is! Oh my Lord what an object. I can only imagine what it looks like from more southerly latitudes. I was using my Orion Expanse 20mm EP with its 66 degree FOV and this thing was taking up more then half of it! Many, many of the stars were resolved and this is when it is so low that when viewed through the finderscope I can see the outline of the distant horizon in the same 5 degree FOV. I wanted to take a picture of it though the AstroView but I had already taken that ‘scope down in anticipation of our early departure in the morning.

While in Centaurus I grabbed a little galaxy, then moved back to Hydra to find another small but nice galaxy. The last object was a globular in Ophiuchus. Color was starting to fill in along the horizon and the starts beginning to dim: my dark sky session had come to a close.

Now the name of the game was to pack up and leave before it got too hot. By the time John woke I had most of this done. By 9:30 we were loaded up and on our way home. I was fairly satisfied with our trip: I had gotten to see some of the miniscule faint fuzzies I hoped for but not nearly enough. That blasted wind and the annoying RVer’s almost had me thinking I would never come here again: but, I doubt that to be reality.

New Objects Viewed -

NIGHT ONE:

- NGC 2672 (Gal) / Mag: 12.6 / Size: 2.6’ x 2.4’ / Cancer
- NGC 2720 (Gal) / Mag: 14.0 / Size: 1.2’ x 1.1’ / Cancer
- NGC 2644 (Gal) / Mag: 13.4 / Size: 1.8’ x 0.7’ / Hydra
- NGC 2718 (Gal) / Mag: 13.0 / Size: 2.3’ x 2.3’ / Hydra
- NGC 2713 (Gal) / Mag: 12.7 / Size: 3.9’ x 1.7’ / Hydra
- NGC 2716 (Gal) / Mag: 13.0 / Size: 1.8’ x 1.4’ / Hydra
- NGC 2991 (Gal) / Mag: 13.5 / Size: 1.4’ x 1.7’ / Leo
- NGC 3098 (Gal) / Mag: 13.0 / Size: 2.6’ x 0.8’ / Leo
- NGC 3663 (Gal) / Mag: 13.3 / Size: 1.9’ x 1.3’ / Crater
- NGC 5958 (Gal) / Mag: 13.4 / Size: 1.2’ x 1.1’ / Corona Borealis
- NGC 5986 (GC) / Mag: 7.52 / Size: 9.8’ / Lupus
- NGC 6124 (OC) / Mag: 5.0 / Size: 40’ / Scorpius

NIGHT TWO:

- NGC 1843 (Gal) / Mag: 13.4 / Size: 2.0’ x 1.9’ / Orion

NIGHT THREE:

- NGC 3640 (Gal) / Mag: 10.7 / Size: 4.1’ x 3.4’ / Leo
- NGC 3630 (Gal) / Mag: 13.0 / Size: 2.3’ x 0.9’ / Leo
- NGC 3604 (Gal) / Mag: 12.8 / Size: 2.4’ x 2.0’ / Leo
- NGC 3521 (Gal) / Mag: 10.5 / Size: 9.5’ x 5.0’ / Leo
- NGC 5353 (Gal) / Mag: 12.0 / Size: 2.8’ x 1.5’ / Canes Venatici
- NGC 5354 (Gal) / Mag: 12.5 / Size: 1.4’ x 1.3’ / Canes Venatici
- NGC 5355 (Gal) / Mag: 14.0 / Size: 1.5’ x 0.9’ / Canes Venatici
- NGC 5350 (Gal) / Mag: 12.4 / Size: 3.6’ x 2.6’Canes Venatici
- M60 / NGC 4649 (Gal) / Mag: 9.8 / Size: 7.2’ x 6.2’ / Virgo
- NGC 4647 (Gal) / Mag: 12.1 / Size: 3.0’ x 2.5’ / Virgo
- NGC 5139 (GC) / Mag: 3.68 / Size: 36’ / Centaurus [Omega Centauri]
- NGC 5253 (Gal) / Mag: 11.0 / Size: 5.0’ x 2.0’ / Centaurus
- NGC 3585 (Gal) / Mag: 10.9 / Size: 2.9’ x 1.6’ / Hydra
- NGC 6293 (GC) / Mag: 9.5 / Size: 7.9’ / Ophiuchus