Dark Skies!
Our annual vacation trip to Southern Shores, NC from June 20-27 took place near the time of new Moon. I decided to bring Seestar along in case skies happened to be clear. Wow! I hit the jackpot! Our new rental house included a great view of the southern sky from one of the elevated decks. That deck location is marked in the next photo.
A small table happened to be available to raise Seestar above the deck railing. The next two pictures show the setup looking south on June 20th.
A red glow comes from battery level indicator lights on Seestar's side. In the next picture you can see the "teapot" of Sagittarius in the center, the Milky Way by the teapot's spout, and the constellation Scorpius on the right. Unfortunate light pollution from a major shopping center ruins the view on the southern horizon, but the horizon in the east, west, and north was much darker than my usual backyard observing location. Distant house lights were relatively weak.
The next panorama, taken in daylight, shows few nearby houses. The road one block south is a public beach access road with no houses, so the view to the southwest on the right is light free!
The 7th and last remaining Messier object was M24 in Sagittarius. M24 is an oddball member of the Messier catalog. It's not a galaxy, nebula, open star cluster, or globular cluster. Instead, it's called a "star cloud". The 14-minute exposure of M24 below reveals two prominent dark interstellar dust clouds at the top and another dark cloud at the bottom. These foreground dark clouds block starlight coming from behind.
With these last seven objects in the bag, my quest to capture all 110 Messier objects with Seestar is complete!
Many dark clouds like the ones pictured above exist in other locations. One particularly nice one in Ophiuchus is called Barnard 68 (also known as LDN57). The following 20-minute exposure shows Barnard 68 in the center as well as a dramatic s-shaped dark cloud to the left. Other small dark clouds are below center.
The final target on June 20th was giant globular cluster M13 paired with small, dim galaxy NGC6207 in Hercules. I used mosaic mode to fit both objects in the field of view. The galaxy was a disappointing tiny smudge below M13 as you can see in the next 23-minute exposure.
June 20th was quite a day! After arriving at our rental house in late afternoon, we hauled our stuff into the house and unpacked. The house was absolutely beautiful inside! I enjoyed this nice collection of miniature lighthouses.
After finishing unpacking on June 20th, I set up Seestar around 11:00 pm and captured a total of nine images. (Only four are shown above.) Then I collapsed into bed well after midnight. My alarm went off at 4:30 am the next morning so I could run before heat and humidity became too dangerous. Thus began a six day run of sleep deprivation.
Lack of sleep was a problem, but conditions for operating Seestar couldn't have been much better! Seestar's elevated deck position was located only a few feet from the corner of my bedroom, so wireless connection to the controlling tablet was easily established. Access to Seestar was readily achieved by exiting through the bedroom's sliding door and climbing a few stairs outside. I controlled Seestar from a bedside chair and was able to nap on the bed during long exposures. Here's a picture of my bedroom/observatory. Seestar was located just a few feet above the left ceiling corner.
During our beach stay the entire region was under a heat dome. Although daytime temperatures were uncomfortably high, an atmospheric high often made nights completely cloud free. On June 23rd I spent another night running Seestar until after midnight. Two images from this night were notable. First, a nice pairing of diffuse globular cluster NGC6366 with bright star 47 Ophiuchi can be seen in the next 8-minute exposure.
June 23rd's best result came from using mosaic mode and a light pollution filter to capture two spectacular Sagittarius nebulae in one field of view. The following 50-minute exposure shows the Lagoon Nebula, M8, (bottom) and the Trifid Nebula, M20, (top).
While my family roasted on the beach during boiling hot daylight, I stayed inside working on this year's version of our beach house jigsaw puzzle. It happened to have an astronomical theme.
On the evening of June 25th our family took a traditional stroll on the Duck boardwalk where we saw colorful sunset scenes.
As you can see above, the cloudy sunset sky didn't look promising for later observing on June 25th. Nevertheless, it became wonderfully clear again near midnight. I devoted this night to capturing two nebulae in Scorpius. Initially, I hoped to fit them both in one field of view, but, even in mosaic mode, this was impossible. Instead, I imaged both separately using Seestar's light pollution filter. Both these nebulae are low on the southern horizon and difficult to capture from my backyard. A 70-minute exposure captured NGC6334, the Cat's Paw Nebula, seen in the next image.
A 51-minute exposure of neighboring nebula NGC6357 is shown in the next image.
On June 26th, our final night before leaving, the sky was clear yet again! Although I badly needed a full night's sleep at this point, I couldn't pass up one more night of wonderful dark conditions. Initial targeting misfires unfortunately used about 20% of Seestar's battery charge. Eventually, I decided to let Seestar expose as long as possible on spectacular nebula M16, the Eagle Nebula, in Sagittarius.
My body was screaming for sleep after midnight, so I climbed into bed next to my tablet, closed my eyes, and quickly fell asleep. I thought I would surely wake up before Seestar's battery died. Sometime later I woke with a jolt and quickly checked my tablet for Seestar's status. Yikes!! Battery charge had dropped to 3%!! A disaster was about to occur because Seestar automatically shuts down when battery charge gets very low.
When Seestar shuts down the telescope arm lowers and tucks away facing vertically down. This cannot happen when Seestar's dew cap is attached! The dew cap prevents Seestar from achieving the downward pointing shutdown position, so an internal motor would grind away trying to move the stationary blocked telescope arm. The sound of a straining motor and possible internal damage were things I didn't want to experence, so I rushed outside in bare feet, unsteadily climbed the stairs, and immediately removed the dew cap. Right at that moment Seestar's automated voice announced it would be automatically shutting down! I didn't even have time to install the lens cap before Seestar shut down! Fortunately, all was well in the end, and I had captured a 95-minute exposure of M16, the Eagle Nebula, which is shown below.
It was quite a productive span of four clear, moonless observing nights during this beach stay! This vacation story ends with one last view of the setting Sun's red reflection stretched across water in Duck.
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