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(Continued from page 7)
tales come true. I cannot take my eyes off those stars and do not quite believe that I am really seeing them. For over 30 years I have read about them and know that they are hidden below the horizon, never to be seen by me. At that point, if I do not see anything else for the rest of the whole trip, it has still been worthwhile. I will never forget the view from a suburban front yard outside of Sydney, the first time I saw the Southern Cross and our Sun's close neighbors.
Don turns out to be the newly-elected president of the Astronomical Society of New South Wales (ASNSW, http://www.asnsw.com). His main job is doing planetarium shows at schools with his portable planetarium; his second job is telescope repair at the shop, where he is the go-to guy for telescope repair in Australia, and perhaps the whole South Pacific. With is mate "Mick," he builds exceptionally fine telescopes. They have a revolutionary design for the primary mirror cell that is a vast improvement over anything I have seen. Don and Mick also star in a comic strip in the shop's newsletter. I have met a few comic strip characters before, but these were the first ones who weren't teenagers in costumes!
Observing at Crago with ASNSW
We head out to Bowen Mountain, on the edge of the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, where ASNSW has one of its observing sites. Crago Observatory is a large domed building housing a 16-inch Dobsonian, an f/8 if I remember correctly. It is superb optically and mechanically, and is a real joy to use. ASNSW hosts most of its public star parties here, fairly close to the city. This night lots of clouds move by and we only get about an hour of good observing. Standing outside the observatory, I get my first look at the Magellanic Clouds, which is another mystical experience I am not expecting. Inside, I observe 47 Tucane, the second brightest globular cluster, and it is easily visible to the unaided eye.
Omega Centari is the brightest globular, big and bright, quite spectacular, but fairly uniformly dense. I get a very good look at it high in the sky. On the other hand, 47 Tuc is about the same brightness, but has a very dense core that is visually much more interesting. It appears quite different at various magnifications. Photographs did not prepare me for this visual spec-tacle. I think 47 Tuc is easily the best globular cluster in the sky, Omega Centari is second, and M13 is no competition at all.
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I have seen NGC253 and NGC55 from the Northern Hemisphere, but like Omega Centari, they are low over the horizon at best. Down under, they pass overhead. These large nearly edge-on spiral galaxies show a huge amount of internal detail visually, and are far more interesting than M31. The Aussies struggle to see M31 low above the northern horizon, but relatively speaking, aren't missing much compared with what we miss from the north. The real "super-star" of galaxies in the southern sky is the Large Magellanic Cloud. LMC is full of clusters and nebulae, and it is quite possible to wander around for hours observing within it.
Spying the spider
The Tarantula Nebula is another object I have waited more than 30 years to see. It exceeds all my expectations -- I could never really see the spider in the pictures, but visually there it is. I see great detail at different scales and lots of contrast. It is better than M42 and M8, although M8 looks pretty nice directly overhead. The barred spiral galaxy NGC1365 is very high, with obvious structure and detail. No doubt, it is the best one of these visible in the whole sky, too.
I want to see the Jewel Box this first night, but
it never clears the clouds. I see a few other things but you get the general idea: almost all the best stuff is in the southern sky, and we don't have much of an idea what we are missing way up north. One hour of observing is enough to make you want to move half way around the world.
As I am in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, and probably the last time for a while, I perform the Coriollis force experiment by filling the bathtub in my hotel room with water and letting it sit all day and night. In the morning, I pull the plug and watch the water drain. I repeat the experiment, this time giving the water a slight rotation in the opposite direction. As expected, results are inconclusive.
During the week, I discover that the ASNSW secretary is attending the same conference I am -- small world. After the conference, I am invited to the ASNSW Wiruna dark sky site. The South Pacific Star Party is held here each year, sort of an RTMC down under. It is about a four-hour drive from Sydney, over the Blue Mountains. It is a very pretty drive, even though it appears to be on the wrong side
(Continued on page 9)
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