Astronomy / Telescope / Stargazing
Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada (Moderate Dark-Sky Site)
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2004/05/19-21  

Time: At night when favorable
Location: Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada (Atlatl Campground: site #11)
Altitude: 2160 ft. ASL
Weather:
- Temperature = ~85 - 60f
- Humidity = ~10%
- Winds = SW @ ~3 with gusts to ~5000mph
- Clouds = 6/5
- Transparency = 6/2
- Seeing = 5/2
- Darkness = 6
Moon Phase: 4%

Telescopes Used:
- Meade 16” Starfinder Dobsonian
- Orion 100mm AstroView Refractor

   

NIGHT ONE:

After the short visit to Stoneman, coming home to find clouds that weren’t supposed to be there & thinking I would get a break at Lovell Canyon only to be clouded over again, I spent Tuesday night cursing the sky.

Sometime early Wednesday morning I started checking the SkyClock. Stoneman, Sedona and Happy Jack were all looking pretty good. As much as I’d like to have joined my friends in Arizona for some truly dark skies, the truth is that it’s probably a bad idea for many reasons.

- Reason One: the price of gasoline is just outrageous ($2:30 for regular unleaded)
- Reason Two: wear and tear on my truck
- Reason Three: John would want to take his truck too so he can take his sand rail (now were talking triple to gas cost [his truck guzzles])
- Reason Four: I’d have to leave Stoneman on Saturday at the latest by midnight and that wears me out for work on Sunday
- Reason Five: John would have to miss another day at school and it is not a good idea especially so near the end of his junior year
- Reason Six: John has an AMR event on Saturday morning anyway and if he skipped on that it would still only leave us with one, possibly 1 ½ nights of observing and that’s a long way to go on a gamble with the weather for such a short time.

So, as I said, early Wednesday morning the SkyClock was looking pretty good. The thought did occur to me to drive by myself to Stoneman. But, I had been up since 2pm on Tuesday and by the time it would have taken me to pack up and drive there it would be sometime around noon and I would have been awake for nearly 22hrs. Not that I haven’t done something like that before but I was either with a companion or had been much younger. Plus, if I went to Stoneman I would have to put up with the Dam Policeman again and spend Wednesday and Thursday nights all alone in the middle of nowhere scared of the 2-legged Coyotes. And, I would feel bad for leaving John behind.

The Las Vegas SkyClock actually looked the best with Lovell Canyon right behind. I’d had good luck at both sites but Lovell Canyon has more of an opportunity for a visit from 2-legged Coyotes or worse! I decided to go to Valley of Fire: at least here a visit from John and others is a very good possibility. I’ve been able to see magnitude 13.5 galaxies from VoF and that’s what I like. I started packing around 7am Wednesday morning, left Las Vegas around 11am (I took my time packing) and got to VoF around noon.

The clouds that had been unexpectedly hanging around and ruining my vacation were promptly departing towards the northwest leaving beautiful blue skies in their place.

There is still a little dust in the air but I am hoping the slight breezes will clear them away. My old spot at Atlatl was available but so were many other sites.

I drove around and found one on the south end that wasn’t in view of so many other sites and that awful florescent light at the fee station.

Only darkness will reveal if I chose a good spot. The horizons on all sides are a little obstructed up to about 15 degrees in most places. But I will be concentrating on objects mostly near zenith so this won’t matter.

  

While I was leisurely setting up my camp I heard a strange noise, a kind of buzzing that was increasingly getting louder. It seemed to be coming from the southeast. I started to look where the sound was coming from and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the air. Finally I spotted the source of the sound it and it scared me to death. It was a huge swarm of bees, wasps or some kind of insects. They were traveling about 30 over the ground and about 30 feet away from me. They were so close I could see individual bees (or whatever they were). They were swirling on an ugly mass but quickly past by and with them they took their angry noises. What had been going through my head was another use for my tarps! I was scared more for Sierra because if for some reason they attacked her, she would probably just run away while they stung the living dog-mess out of her – literally! (Did I mention I brought Sierra with me? No, but you probably already realized it from the earlier photo.)

I made my first observation sometime around 2pm: that of our nearest star. That would be the sun of course.

  

I took a few moments to make a simple sketch of the locations of the sun spots. Then I tried to take a nap. That didn’t work so well in the moderate heat of the day so I got up and found a spot that my cell phone worked from.

I had to walk around the outcropping of rocks to my west and climb on another big boulder to get a signal. I only got one bar but it was enough to contact the outside world. (Now, while writing this I’m thinking of trying another nap) Sierra already is and probably dreaming of chasing gophers or whatever those little rodents are that are running around all over the place. They don’t look like the things I’ve seen before at Death Valley.

  

The nap is not working so I got up and started to straighten up my camp a little. The sun is setting and it angle is making it hot under my picnic shelter. I made some shade with tarps and bungee cords: to the rescue (again)!

  

  

At about 4pm a black car drove by and stopped at my driveway. The man in the car said “I saw the ‘scope and had to say hello.” Of course I asked him if he wanted to look at the sun. And more of-courser he did! His name is Nathan and I’m assuming he’s from Las Vegas. He told me he just bought a 6” reflector from a friend and will pick it up tomorrow. We chatted for a while and I told him to come back in the evening if he was still in the park. He is also the first person I’ve been able to tell: “hey, check out my website. It’s 32bravo.com.” He said he would and drove away.

At 1700 hrs I made another observation of the sun and also a little sketch noting the changes to the spots from earlier in the day.

Venus, Jupiter and then Saturn all got their turns in accord.

As it got dark, I noted the Beehive Cluster is visible naked-eye even though it is on the side of Vegas and her sky-glow. The Coma Cluster being more overhead is also very visible. Comet Q4 has decided to hide tonight: this place is nice to observe at but it’s certainly no Stoneman!

As it got even darker I took peeks at some familiar objects: The Sombrero, Pinwheel (which I hadn’t looked at in a while), Whirlpool, Sunflower, Cat’s Eye and Hercules Cluster. I was waiting for the skies to get as dark as possible before I started the systematic search for the magnitude 13 galaxies I wanted to see.

While I was looking at The Cat’s Eye Nebula in Draco I saw there was a nearby double that I thought I hadn’t seen before. It is 16/17 Draconis and it will split in the 9 x 50 finderscope. In the EP at 90x the pair seemed to be split a second time into brighter orange and just dim colorless stars. After checking my log I found I’d already split this pair. Oh well. Still waiting for darkness (or maybe it is and I can’t tell because of the skyglow from Vegas) I took another look at M13. In dark skies this object is visible naked eye. At the time of my observation Hercules was somewhere near 45 degrees and not visible naked eye; yet. However, at 90x the nearby galaxy is. Ursa Major was slumbering high in the sky so I looked at M108 noting it was brighter towards one edge of the galaxy. The nearby Planetary Nebula (M97, the Owl) looks great even without the filter and further back along the Bear’s belly; M109 is hanging on like a ghostly tick. I’ve seen most of these objects before but with the 10” Dobsonian, it’s nice to see them in a bigger mirror.

Finally at 2230 hrs it got dark enough to see Comet Q4. It was not the obvious thing it had been last weekend but still nice to see. For some reason I took the time to look at M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy through my AstroView and through the binoculars I looked at M4 in Scorpius. Just as it was getting really dark (for this site) high thin clouds decided to move into the area turning the stars soft and mushy.

I stayed up until 0300 hrs waiting for the sky to become transparent again: it never did at least sky-wide. With Hercules at Zenith there was a moment where I caught M13 visible naked eye and the Milky Way is certainly visible with some visible definition to it. Tonight I heard no coyotes but I did see some bats and heard an owl.

NIGHT TWO:

I woke around 0630 hrs not because I was rested but because the sun was blazing on me. Of course, I woke to beautifully clear skies but now the wind was picking up a notch or two. During the morning I made a couple of observations of the sun and sketches to match. The Park Ranger stopped by my camp to give me change due from my camping fee (That was nice, I thought I might just be out $6). He saw my ‘scopes and told me about another place that might be better (since Atlatl has those lights at the fee station) to view from. It’s on the road to VoF and is called Bitter Creek Road.

Yesterday Sierra had been catching flies and eating ants and lizards: I didn't know they were so tasty.

Today she seemed rather sick (I wonder why) and lethargic. At noon while I was taking a nap, a big gust of wind blew my campstove off of the table sending it crashing to the ground and along with it my coffee pot. No…not the coffee pot! At least the wind didn’t send it careening into my telescope! The noise scarred Sierra so bad she has now become a blithering scardy-dog shaking at the slightest sound or rustle of breeze.

During the day I had three individuals and one group of four people stop by and check out the sun through the AstroView. Besides them and Sierra, I was accompanied by lots of chirping squirrel thingy’s. At 1500 hrs I took another quick peek at the sun and then tried to sleep. I slept off and on until 1900 hrs not sleeping well because it had become severely windy!

About ½ hr later I had a surprise: my friend Sparky called (my cell phone strangely worked at camp) and said he was on his way out here and that he was also bringing my son with him! Very nice – John would stay the night and Sparky would return the following day to pick him back up. (He has more events at AMR he needs to go to.) The sky was still clear and the wind had died a little. Before their arrival I watched Venus set behind the boulders to my west, looked at Saturn (and Titan I’m assuming) while there was still blue in the sky and then took a couple of high power looks at Jupiter.

Shortly thereafter Sparky, John and his dog (The Worm - dogs real name witheld due to new HIPA laws) arrived.

The winds had died down and Comet Q4 was visible naked-eye. Tonight was much cooler then the previous as now I had to put pants and a warm shirt on opposed to the tank-top and shorts I was wearing last night. Sparky only stayed a short while before returning back to the office.

While John and I were just sitting around the camp talking, I noticed somebody out in the darkness milling around on the road in front of our camp. I shouted out a “hello” and asked if they would like to look through the ‘scopes. The person that walked up was a nice elderly man named Steven. From the sound of his accent he was either German or Dutch. He told me he had a 2” Tasco and had never seen through a ‘scope like the Meade although he was familiar with most of the objects I showed him. He was also very “up” on his astronomical and even cosmological knowledge: I was impressed. He stayed for about 45 minutes looking and talking before he took his leave and wandered back into the darkness. John stayed awake for a little while longer before he and the dogs hit the hay leaving me with slight breezes and clear skies to search for my magnitude galaxies in.

Hercules was standing tall nearly at zenith so I started there trying to finish off where I left it at Stoneman. NGC 6339 at magnitude 13.4 was the first victim. Its oval body was super faint with an even brightness and just a bit of a brighter core. NGC 6239 at magnitude 12.9 didn’t look any better even though it is brighter but had a nice grouping of stars nearby. NGC 6155 was nice but small and had a pair of brighter stars near one edge. Both NGC’s 6146 & 6173 are galaxies I searched for in Stoneman and had conflicting notes for. Tonight I found them in the same area I had looked at in Stoneman but they still don’t really match up with the “official” documentation. I gave myself credit anyway! NGC 6181 was a pleasing object in the EP along with it “associated” nearby stars but the planetary NGC 6058 still eluded me. NGC 6098 was probably the best find of the night seeing that it is really two galaxies in one. The other is NGC 6099 and together they look like one, long and bright galaxy. An object I’d already seen is NGC 6210: a planetary nebula and tonight it was looking nice, round and teal. I like color sometimes as opposed to the black and white world of galaxies. But that’s right back to where I went when I found NGC 6269, 6278 & 6487, all being less then magnitude 13 galaxies. NGC 6504 was a small but nice object in the EP and NGC 6632 was runner-up in the “best looking galaxy of the night” competition. It kind of looked like the number “9”.

The Milky Way was by now pouring its beauty across the sky with Cygnus flying to lap it up. (Do birds drink milk?) Anyway, the area around Deneb was looking almost as luminous as it does in Stoneman: the North American Nebula was visible naked-eye. I went from the advantageous aperture of the Starfinder down to the more humble sized AstroView. But small things come in good packages and for the first time I could make out the nebulosity telescopically of the North American Nebula: NGC 7000. It took the f/6 ratio of the AstroView plus the 30mm 2” 1rpd EP at the lowly power of 20x and the Orion SkyGlow nebula filter to see it but it was definitely there. I could clearly see the difference, albeit only in certain spots, where the cloudiness and blackness were separated. I tried for the Pelican Nebula (IC 5067) without the same luck but did manage to see some nebulosity of the Crescent Nebula: NGC 6888.

I tried to go back to Hercules for more galaxies but that section of the sky had gone soft. Since the Milky Way was still looking good I stayed with my set-up in the AstroView and checked out the Veil in Cygnus. With this configuration I could see both sides of the Veil at one time: not very bright but definitely there; nice!

Looking at my charts and maps I saw that the little constellation Equuleus has only one Deep-Sky Object with in it’s boundaries: that of NGC 7015. I found it looking fairly even in brightness across its body without much of a central core. There was a nice little star nearby.

Moving on to a much grander constellation I found a few Open Clusters in Cepheus. NGC 7261 had a nice yellow star in it and a kind of “upside down frown” group of stars under it. The next object I found has got to be one of the coolest Open Clusters I’ve seen. I’d like to officially (unless its already been done) give it a name. The cluster is officially designated NGC 7235 but I would like it to be known as “The Riddler Cluster”. It looked like a big question mark sitting right on top of a little question mark and reminded me of the old TV series “Batman” and especially of the part when they would show something the character “The Riddler” was doing. (Zowie, Bam, Ouch, Huh?) If you tilt you head a little bit it might help. The cluster NGC 7226 also had an odd shape to it. It reminded me of the game “hangman” and NGC 7380 looked like a computer emoticon of a frowning face.

What I really wanted to see now was the “other” comet: Bradfield or C/2004 F4. At 0330 I found it sort of near M31 which was not visible naked eye. It was still fairly low and caught up in the skyglow of Mesquite which is north of VoF and hadn’t really became apparent ‘till late in the evening. Anyway, the comet was pretty nice in the 20mm EP at 90x in the Meade 16” Starfinder. The tail was visible but did not stretch out of the FOV like Q4 did at Stoneman, nor was the comets “core” as nearly as intense. That makes three comets I’ve seen now.

The sky was still looking pretty good, the N.A. Nebula still visible now near its highest angulation of the night but the pesky wind had returned. Since I had been in Andromeda with Bradfield I stayed there for one last new object of the night: NGC 7686. It’s an Open Cluster and looks much better in the 9 x 50 finderscope. I could tell the sky was starting to gain color and I looked at one last object for the night: M57, my wonderful ring. In the Starfinder at 203x with the SkyGlow filter this object is totally awe-inspiring but too short lived. I wanted to wake up John but instead enjoyed it by myself and watched the sun rise turning night into another day.

NIGHT THREE:

I woke at 0700 hrs to Sierra bolting after something in the bushes. I guess she’s feeling better now. She bolted so hard she broke her leash. (If I don’t tie her up while I sleep she’ll wander off) The commotion of Sierra also woke up John and “The Worm”. The first order of business on this beautiful morning was a solar observation. Yup, it’s there just like yesterday, spots and all! But today, with no wind we had a much cleaner image. The second order of the day is to make breakfast and feed the birds &

the ground-monk-chip-squirrels: that’s what I’ve named the little scurrying things that are running around.

There are about 8 of them: two of them are mothers (a body can just tell about certain things) and along with our terrestrial visitors we have also heavenly visitors of the aviary kind all looking for a hand-out. At one point two huge lizards made their way through out camp, one right on the tail of another.

We spent most of the day inspecting the area around our camp and taking some pictures.

  

  

  

  

  

  

At noon, high wispy clouds moved in from the south followed by a pretty good darn gusty wind blowing in from the southwest. Hopefully both of them will go away before nightfall.

I did have one person during the day that stopped at camp for a view of the sun but that was it for the day. Being Friday I expected more people in the campground but it just didn’t happen.

We did however get some new neighbors. They looked to be a nice couple in what we could tell was a rented RV. They weren’t as nice as I thought and let their child cry uncontrollably and then left the generator in the RV run, loudly for about 2 hrs. As day began to fade into night Sparky arrived to pick up John. We had a couple of visitors but it was still really too light to show them anything in the ‘scopes. John pointed out the thin 2.15 day old crescent moon over the horizon so we took turns looking at that while waiting for darkness to set in.

  

Sparky needed to get back to the office so he, John and “The Worm” left Sierra and I for our last night of observing.

Just as it got really dark I had another visitor wanting to look through the ‘scope. I spent about ½ hr showing him the more familiar, large objects in this season’s night sky then we talked about astronomy for another ½ hr or so before he said his thanks and returned to his camp. I took a break and looked at my maps and charts trying to plan my night’s course of action. Well, it was all for naught: the wind came without warning and with a vengeance. I was really worried about my ‘scopes being out in it especially unprotected: sand was blowing like they were little needles instead. I tried to get my bags over them but the wind would not let me. Eventually I got them on but it was a poor job. As I sat there in dismay wondering what to do the winds suddenly subsided into nothing. I got the coverings on the ‘scopes in a more secured fashion just as another round of wind blew in, no clouds just furious winds. They blew for nearly an hour and Sierra and I hid from their effects. Whence they died to a halt I chanced a gander at the sky: ugly it had become. Before the planes which were making their approaches to Las Vegas, huge beams of light were jutting out before them, Arcturus at zenith was a twinkling beacon. The sky would not become transparent again tonight even if the howling winds stayed still the length of the night. I resigned to higher powers and semi packed up my outfit waiting for the light of day to finish. Sleeping was a chore and uncomfortable but here and there I caught some.

Of course the sun woke me and I found lovely blue skies with not a hint of a breeze. I finished my packing, loaded it all up in my truck and Sierra and I headed home.

  

It had not been the perfect 3-day semi-dark sky event I had been hoping for, but it was 3 days spent with Mother Nature that I was thankful for.

New Objects Viewed:

- NGC 6339 (Gal) / Mag: 13.4 / Size: 3.3’ x 1.8’ / Hercules
- NGC 6239 (Gal) / Mag: 12.9 / Size: 2.6’ x 1.2’ / Hercules
- NGC 6155 (Gal) / Mag: 13.1 / Size: 1.4’ x 0.9’ / Hercules
- NGC 6146 (Gal) / Mag: 13.5 / Size: 1.6’ x 1.2’ / Hercules
- NGC 6173 (Gal) / Mag: 13.2 / Size: 2.2’ x 1.7’ / Hercules
- NGC 6181 (Gal) / Mag: 12.5 / Size: 2.6’ x 1.3’ / Hercules
- NGC 6098/99 (Gal) / Mag: 13.2 / Size: 1.6’ x 0.9’ / Hercules
- NGC 6269 (Gal) / Mag: 13.4 / Size: 2.0’ x 1.6’ / Hercules
- NGC 6278 (Gal) / Mag: 13.6 / Size: 2.1’ x 1.2’ / Hercules
- NGC 6487 (Gal) / Mag: 13.2 / Size: 1.9’ x 1.7’ / Hercules
- NGC 6504 (Gal) / Mag: 13.5 / Size: 2.2’ x 0.4’ / Hercules
- NGC 6632 (Gal) / Mag: 12.9 / Size: 3.0’ x 1.3’ / Hercules
- NGC 6888 (DN) / Mag: 10.0 / Size: 20’ x 10’ / Cygnus
- NGC 7015 (Gal) / Mag: 13.2 / Size: 2.0’ x 1.8’ / Equuleus
- NGC 7261 / Cr450 / OCL-237 (OC) / Mag: 8.4 / Size: 5’ / Cepheus
- NGC 7235 / Cr447 / OCL-229 (OC) / Mag: 7.7 / Size: 4’ / Cepheus [Riddler]
- NGC 7226 / Cr446 / OCL-226 (OC) / Mag: 9.6 / Size: 1.8’ / Cepheus
- NGC 7380 / Cr452 / OCL-244 (NOC) / Mag: 7.2 / Size: 12’ / Cepheus
- C/2004 F4 / Comet Bradfield / (in Andromeda)
- NGC 7686 / Cr456 / OCL-251 (OC) / Mag: 5.6 / Size: 14’ / Andromeda