Medoc July 24

I was glued to the sky chart until the afternoon update, which showed an unusually clear summer evening. Within an hour, I had plans to meet Allen Davis at Medoc! This was my first trip to Medoc after having heard so much.

I arrived at 8pm. Allen was there with his friend Don, and Sims Roy was also there. The sky was clear all night, but it was quite humid. Very early on, things got wet. None the less, the observing was great fun. All night long, the views were consistently much better than we expected given the humidity. The sky got darker as the night went on, with midnight being much darker than 10-11pm. By 3am it was a bit darker still. Our limiting magnitude was at least 5.2.

We had quite a few people from the campground stop by. We showed them the usual tourist traps, which were well-received. Two boys in high school ended up staying out with us very late (1 or 2 am) and had a great time. They got to see what observing is really about and look at lots of different objects.

I started with some usual suspects:

M13- high overhead, and looking beautiful! A young boy described it as "fireworks that were frozen".
M5- also spectacular. Lots of stars resolving nicely.
Ring Nebula- Wonderful as always. This was a big hit.
Whirlpool Galaxy- this is where the humidity began to show. The two galaxy cores were very bright and obvious. The arms were easy to spot, but the view wasn't terribly clear.
Pinwheel Galaxy- more challenging. The arms were difficult to spot without moving the scope back and forth a bit.
Veil Nebula- Decent, but not nearly as much detail as I saw at MASP. The middle section was unusually hard to find given how dark it was.
Swan Nebula- Very good with lots of detail, especially around the bottom of the check. The OIII filter didn't help as much as I am used to. At 205x with the OIII, I couldn't see a lot of the peripheral nebulosity that I know is there.
Wild Ducks- Pristine! The star field looked really sharp. This is one of my favorites.
Dumbbell Nebula- Very bright, with the outer ellipse well-defined. Beautiful, ghostly look. This one appeared a bit more orange than other nebulas.
NGC 6217- small, faint galaxy with a round disk and relatively bright core.
M56- Understated globular cluster in Lyra, only a few stars resolving near the core at 293x.
NGC 7331- Brightest galaxy in Pegasus, but very faint on this evening. I couldn't make out any companions.
Andromeda Galaxy- Very nice with its companions. I could see just the one major dust lane as a hard edge on one side.
Jupiter- Pushed this all the way up to 584x, and the image stayed ok. It had moments of clarity that came and went. Probably the best view was around 410x. We could see a lot of detail in the cloud bands. Try as we may, we could not make out the impact point that was spotted recently. We had enough clarity that I think we would have seen it if it were still visible.

At one point, I heard Allen and the two boys talking about how great the Andromeda Galaxy looked through binoculars. I went over, and Allen handed me a smallish pair that he said were 12x36. Then he said "when you get it in view, just push this button on top". Huh? It turns out that these were image-stabilized binoculars made by Canon. I got Andromeda into the field of view with the usual shakes from hand-holding, and then I pushed the magic button. WHOA! The whole image went from quite jittery to just slowly floating around.

This really felt like magic, and it takes binocular astronomy to a completely different level. You can just walk outside, point your binoculars up, and enjoy the kind of stability that you would expect out of a quality mount. Amazing! I'm sure this is perfect for travel, or for a cold night when you just want to step outside to see something and then dart right back in. This technology adds tremendous value to the experience of binocular astronomy. Too bad they are so expensive! (currently $550 on Amazon, or $900 for 15x50s).

Oh, and Andromeda looked stunning through the binos. I also picked out M13, the Swan Nebula, and the Lagoon Nebula. For someone who does binocular astronomy a fair amount, I think the IS feature would be well worth the price. It also seems to be a fair trade-off to go down in aperture a bit in exchange for having a stable image.

Allen and I decided to pack up around 4am. The observing was still good, but it was getting very wet, and we were both starting to feel tired. It was a very fun evening, and the conditions were about as good as one can expect for July.