Starlight from Long Mountain

The first serious dive

Saturday evening was bloody chilly. I thought I’d have bought some warmth by moving south, but the thermometer disagreed at 19 degrees when I finally ventured out. I thought I’d take you with me, minus the absurd temperatures, so you can see what the fuss is about. It’s good to have your obsessed friends tell you of their exploits, instead of making you tag along.

Months of maddening details had stymied my observing, but selling a house and starting a new life seems a reasonable excuse to be low on starlight. Finally, contracts were signed, boxes were moved, and the telescope sat in the field, cooled and ready to rock. A coat over an old park ranger suit, a hat, gloves, and a muffler did the trick. After all, astronomy dictates the participant to just stand there in the cold.

Looking at the same sky from a different location is a bit like taking an old friend on an unfamiliar journey. They might behave a certain way at the park, but what about in the city? The sights ten minutes south of Lynchburg, VA, were a dramatic improvement from my DC-area former home. (For my fellow astronomers, I was logging observations with a 12.5” f/5 Mag1 Portaball dob.)

The great green swirl of the Orion Nebula arced and billowed delicately, The Fish Mouth jet black against the stellar foundry. The Flame Nebula flickered nearby, a delightful treat that can be surprisingly easy or maddingly difficult to detect, depending on sky conditions. Turning to deeper space, the spring galaxy favorites were starting to loom up over Long Mountain. Off came the gloves as I jotted the designations in my notebook, the pen making a faint scratching sound in the quiet of the night.

“A zingy duo of space lemon slices” is hardly a scientific description of M65 and M66 in Leo, but by Jove, they seemed downright tangy against the blackness. Maybe it was the cold. (Nearby “King Hamlet’s Ghost” NGC 3628 was almost bright under these skies, too.) There’s something so exciting about observing these little blurs. Millions of light years away, churning in the Infinite, housing unfathomable potential…plus, their difficulty in observation makes looking at galaxies a favorite in my book.

The lateness of the hour and depth of the cold started to take it’s toll. Still, onward into the depths I voyaged - more bright galaxies, some alphabet soup ones in the bowl of the Big Dipper, and then…For the last target of the evening, The Spindle Galaxy, NGC 3115, 32 million light years from our own galaxy, and several times as big…a wisp in the Black, appearing a tiny blur in the telescope, harboring a supermassive black hole at its core.

A note on gear: I switched out to my binoviewer attachment, letting me use two eyes to gaze upon this wonder. I almost fell into Infinity. There’s something exhilarating about all of this - the size, the scale, the lateness of the hour, the biting cold, the hush fallen over the land, save for a distant car or two.

Wow. Owen Wilson Wow.

I brought the gear in, and looked at the temp: 13.8 degrees. Could be worse.