Outreach at Land Between the Lakes

I got to break my telescope out of the case, for the first time in over a month, and the first time under "dark skies" since last March or so.

Land Between the Lakes NRA lies between Lake Kentucky (dam on the Tennessee River) and Barklay Lake (dam on the Cumberland River), in southwestern KY and northwestern TN. It's bisected by U.S. 68/KY-80, while "The Trace" intersects that highway, and runs north to south through the Land Between the Lakes. Just south of The Trace is the Golden Pond Visitors Center and Planetarium. Just behind the planetarium is the observatory and meeting place for the Western Kentucky Amateur Astronomers. Their home page (which I linked above) has a photo of their new observatory, which contains a 16-inch Meade SCT on one heck of a stable pier and wedge.

During the summer, they had a nice regular program that involved telescope viewing after a late-evening planetarium show. I joined them yesterday.

Nice, friendly group of people. They made me feel very welcome.

We were all very optimistic about observing last night, because the day had been virtually cloud-free, with dry (for Kentucky) conditions.

While waiting for the public to arrive, I got to do a lot of personal viewing with my 8-inch SCT (which made the trip to Kentucky). My goto function is still pretty useless, and my battery pack would wear out after only a few big slews, anyway. As it was, even just doing the clockdrive work, it died after about an hour of viewing.

This still gave me about an hour of extended viewing, plus another hour or so of "gotta check and see if the object is still there" viewing. During this evening, I got nice (and long-missed) views of M57 (Ring Nebula), M13 (Hercules Globular), M20 (Lagoon Nebula) and M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy). I also looked again at M22 (globular in Sagittarius), M31 (Andromeda galaxy), M17 (Swan Nebula), M92 (the "other" globular in Hercules), the Perseus Double Cluster, M15 (Andromeda globular). I've see all of these before, but several are ones I have had some difficulty finding without goto, so it was nice to have success locating all of the targets I sought.

A club member had a short-tube 90mm refractor, and that gave an amazing view of the Veil Nebula, with a whole arc of nebulosity (several degrees in length) in view at once. Meanwhile, with the club's 16-inch SCT, I got my best ever views of M13 and M27 (the Dumbbell Nebula). I felt I could see actual color on the Dumbbell (greenish blue), and I could see a sort of spiral structure on M13 (with several dark lanes and threads of stars I had never really noticed before. (After seeing them obviously with the 16-inch, I could then see them in my own 8-inch, but that's because I knew what I was looking for).

It was my most enjoyable night of viewing in quite a while, and I wholeheartedly thank the WKAA club for their hospitality and eagerness in greeting a newcomer and sharing their knowledge and expertise with both me and the other first-time visitors and guests here in the Land Between the Lakes.