Cottonwood, 5/25/06

Stargazing from the Cottonwood campground in Joshua Tree National Park Thursday night. Arrived at my regular site B15 in the upper loop about 6:20pm. Sunset at 7:30pm. A few other stargazers in the camp tonight... Chuck from Yuma is just across from me with his 5" Meade and Lee and Bonnie from British Columbia are in the lower loop with their 17.5" truss dob. I have my TV76 and Nikon 10x42 SE binoculars. Sky conditions aren't great. The day had been very clear but haze moved in by late afternoon. Still, it's always impressive how much more i can see from here than from my backyard. Otherwise temps are comfortably cool and no wind.

Didn't take formal observing notes. Seems now i'm just happy to be out under the stars and it doesn't matter so much if i take detailed notes or not. A partial list of objects included galaxies M104 and M83 in Virgo, planetary 4361 and galaxy 4038/4039 in Corvus. In Ursa Major galaxy 3184 between Tania Borealis and Tania Australis, galaxy M108, planetary M97, galaxies M109, M101 and M51 with companion just over the border in Canes Venatici.

After a while i walked over to visit Lee and Bonnie and shared some great views through their 17.5". The Omega Centauri cluster was spectacular as was 5128 Centaurus A. We toured some wonderful edge-on galaxies as well as the M81/M82/3077 "trio" in Ursa Major. On returning to my site i also visited Omega Centauri and Centaurus A plus the Leo Trio and the Ursa Major trio. Spent another hour or so in the lounger just wandering around with binoculars. Slept for a few hours and got up at 3:30am to see the B and C components of comet Schwassmann-Wachmann rising over the Eagle mtns. Both easily visible and fitting in the same binocular field. Unable to find G or R components.

Florian
Stargazing.com
BinoGuy.com

Good report!

I had an observing site that I used for many years not far north from
where you were.....Up on Copper Mountain Mesa between Twenty-nine Palms
and Joshua Tree, off the upper end of Sunfair Rd. Before that, I spent
a lot of time just immediately south of Cottonwood. I'd exit Interstate
10 at the southern entrance getting to Cottonwood, but I would head
south up the dirt trail that lead up into the hills. Just over the
ridge (about 2 miles) the dirt road drops into a broad valley that is a
pretty good site. The only visible lights would be the infrequent car
coming out of Cottonwood down to the interstate.

It was good to hear you ran into Lee and Bonnie.....Lee is my oldest
observing buddy. My 17.5 and his are nearly twins, with virtually
identical quality mirrors. We've set up the twin scopes together for
years at the Mt. Kobau get-together. We've spent many a night chasing
each other around the sky. We've looked around together so much that we
often are not aware of which scope we're using.

Wayne Howell
Photon Phlats Observatory
Port Townsend, WA

a lot of time just immediately south of Cottonwood. I'd exit Interstate
10 at the southern entrance getting to Cottonwood, but I would head
south up the dirt trail that lead up into the hills. Just over the
ridge (about 2 miles) the dirt road drops into a broad valley that is a
pretty good site.

Hi Wayne,

Yes, i've been up that side as well. On weekends when Cottonwood is too busy i'll go someplace like that instead of the campground.


It was good to hear you ran into Lee and Bonnie...

They are a delightful couple! After chatting in the dark and sharing the scope for about an hour it was as if we'd know each other for years. Ask Lee about his scorpion sting! ;-)

-Florian

Florian wrote:

They are a delightful couple! After chatting in the dark and sharing the
scope for about an hour it was as if we'd know each other for years. Ask
Lee about his scorpion sting! ;-)

-Florian



Florian, when I open your messages in Thunderbird, the text runs out to
the right and never wraps. In OE, there's wrapping at the edge of my
message window (for as big as I want to make it). It's an interesting
thing. I don't seem to get this from anyone but you. Maybe you could
check your settings? From what I can see from the header, you also are
using Thunderbird.

This is what I dug out of your header:
Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308)
Text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

My headers show the same, but they also wrap appropriately when I post
(I think). As you will note above, when I reply to you in Thunderbird,
the wrap and indent will correct whatever is going on. I haven't a clue
what's "wrong" with your posts.

Not sure you understand what I'm complaining about, so just imagine the
text I quoted above running off the right end of you message window,
requiring a scroll right to read the entire paragraph, which appears as
a single line from left to right.

-Stephen

Florian wrote:
a lot of time just immediately south of Cottonwood. I'd exit
Interstate 10 at the southern entrance getting to Cottonwood, but I
would head south up the dirt trail that lead up into the hills. Just
over the ridge (about 2 miles) the dirt road drops into a broad valley
that is a pretty good site.

Hi Wayne,

Yes, i've been up that side as well. On weekends when Cottonwood is too
busy i'll go someplace like that instead of the campground.


It was good to hear you ran into Lee and Bonnie...

They are a delightful couple! After chatting in the dark and sharing the
scope for about an hour it was as if we'd know each other for years. Ask
Lee about his scorpion sting! ;-)

-Florian


Nevermind, it was a problem on my end.... I guess I should have looked
more closely _before_ I sent that last post. Doh.

Hi Florian,

Thanks for posting your stargazing report! Some of my best sessions
have been of that simple, casual, no notes variety. Notes can add as
well as detract from an observing session. Everything is a
compromise!

Some night I would like to get far enough south to see Omega Centauri
and many other southern sights. Part of my philosophy in working
harder to see more from my northern location is that when I'm done,
I'll have a much better excuse to go south :-)

So just where is Joshua Tree National Park?

Willie,
An old visual
Amateur Stargeezer

So just where is Joshua Tree National Park?


Hi Willie,

It's a desert park in southern Calif. Here is the official website...

http://www.nps.gov/jotr/

-Florian

Florian, when I open your messages in Thunderbird, the text runs out to
the right and never wraps. In OE, there's wrapping at the edge of my
message window (for as big as I want to make it). It's an interesting
thing. I don't seem to get this from anyone but you.


Hi Stephen,

I generally do not like to put line breaks in my posts or emails and leave it to the reader to wrap the text as they see fit. (I know some people disagree with this but i think leaving out line breaks offers the reader a choice.) Glad you found the setting you mentioned in your other message to make my messages wrap. Out of curiosity what was the setting you changed?

-Florian

Florian wrote:
reader a choice.) Glad you found the setting you mentioned in your other
message to make my messages wrap. Out of curiosity what was the setting
you changed?


In Thunderbird:
Tools | Options | Display | Formatting | Wrap Text

(Simple enough)