Pettigrew Day 1

On Sunday, March 29, Robert Nielsen and I drove out to Pettigrew State Park three days later than planned, due to rain. The park is in eastern North Carolina surrounded by farmland and swamps, so it is extremely dark. There are 13 camp sites, a boat launch area with a great southern horizon, a bath house with a battery charging station, and the ranger office. The ideal location for observing is the boat launch area, but it can get very windy. The camp sites do not have electricity, but the boat launch area has an electrical outlet on the side of a light post. The battery charging station consists of a set of shelves on the outside of the bath house with 6 or 8 standard AC electrical outlets.

Pettigrew has very dark sky. I could see several magnitude 6 stars, but no magnitude 7s. The next two nights were the best observing I've had to date! The rangers and other staff were all very friendly and extremely accommodating. They are very interested in supporting and promoting astronomy at their facility, and they recognize that the dark sky is one of their most valuable natural resources.

We setup after dinner by the boat ramps on faith that the wind would die down as predicted. Around 7:30, the wind had calmed enough that we could do some lunar observing. By 8pm the wind was roaring again, and by 9pm, it was up to about 20mph sustained. By 9:30 it was nearing 25mph, and we decided to move inland to the parking area. It was a giant pain, but ultimately necessary since the wind howled for the rest of the night.

The first objects I went for were M81 and M82. The first words in my notes are "Good Lord!!!". The detail was incredible, and both were big and bright. In M81, I could see certain spots that were much brighter than others.

M108: Long, bright edge-on galaxy. I noticed a dense knot on the north end.
M97: Big ball of a nebula, and quite bright. The central star was obvious.
M51: Whirlpool! Wow, this was a show-stopper! The spiral structure was clear as day. No averted vision necessary!
M109: Galaxy with a dense core. It is faint, but the extremities are large.
NGC 3953: Brighter galaxy than M109.
M106: Large, bright galaxy with two fainter edge-on galaxies in the same field of view to the west.
NGC 4051: Two spiral arms are obvious.
M94: Bright inner disk for the nucleus with a large, softer outer disc.
M101: This is the Pinwheel, and I can see why! I am still fairly new to astronomy, so I didn't know that M101 was the Pinwheel. But as soon as I saw it in the eyepiece, there was no doubt! The level of detail was incredible.
M63: Very bright galaxy with a clear dust lane under the nucleus.
M3: This is a huge globular cluster. The core is of course very dense, but even well outside the core, the area is completely saturated. To me, it looked like a silver frost had formed between the brightest stars around the core. Spectacular!
M53: Small globular cluster that is bright and dense, with lots of starts resolving in and around the core. NGC 5053 is a much fainter globular in the same field of view, but none of its stars would resolve.
M64: This is the Black Eye Galaxy. I laughed out loud when I saw it, because that's exactly how it looks! There is a black void on one side of the nucleus. It was well-defined, and the galaxy was very bright.

At this point, I moved down to some objects closer to the horizon.

NGC 3621: This is a beautiful face-on galaxy. It is fairly bright, and it fits snugly inside four prominent stars which are shaped like a kite. It makes for a nicely-framed view.
NGC 3242: The Ghost of Jupiter. It looked like a bulls-eye with its concentric circles, and the central star was very obvious. It looked best at 293x.

Now I did some wandering in Virgo, Coma Berenices, and Leo. With my Nagler 17, I get 121x and the usual Nagler wide field. Wandering with this eyepiece, I came across dozens upon dozens of galaxies, most of which looked fairly small and faint. At one point, I think I had about 15 in one field of view. It is mind-blowing to see how many entire galaxies there are up there.

It was now 2am, which was the ideal time to observe Omega Centauri. Robert and I grabbed our binoculars and headed back to the boat launch area. The wind was still howling out there. After consulting a star chart, we were able to locate this huge globular cluster immediately with the naked eye, just a few degrees above the horizon. Through the binoculars, it was obvious that this thing is a beast! Its sheer size it just incredible. I can't wait to get a telescope on it. I did a direct comparison by observing M3, M13, and then Omega Centauri each in a row with my binoculars, and Omega Centauri made the others look like a joke.

Back to my telescope, I toured some summer objects, hit a couple more in Coma Berenices, and then turned in for the night.

M13: Looked amazing. I saw the same frost-like structure as I saw in M3 earlier. Even at 293x, stars were resolving exceptionally well, even right at the core.
Ring Nebula: Amazing! Despite a lot of trying, I could not see the central star. However, at certain places along the ring, I could see a color difference from the inside to the outside. I couldn't quite pin down what the colors were, but the difference was very interesting.
NGC 4565: This is an edge-on galaxy in Coma Berenices that looks a lot like the Sombrero, but thinner. Very impressive image and highly recommended!
Coma Galaxy Cluster: I saw a good 30 galaxies in a very small area, and at least 12-15 in one field of view. Incredible!

There were a number of galaxies that I observed throughout the evening but did not make notes on. The simple truth is that after a while, a fuzzy blob is a fuzzy blob. Many of them were very nice to look at, but did not really stand out from the crowd. Here is a partial list of NGC numbers: 3277, 3077, 3610, 3445, 3448, 3310, 4088, 4248, 4231, 4232.

Around 4am, we were both losing concentration and gave in. It was pretty cold at this point, which made the retreat into a sleeping bag very appealing. We covered our scopes and left them in the parking area. The scopes took up two adjacent parking spots, flanked on either side by our cars. The park had very little traffic (it was a Sunday night after all), so we felt pretty secure that the scopes would be undisturbed. They were also within 100 ft of the ranger office and in plain view of the office windows.