One Last Oracle Trip

 

Zodiacal Light as seen from Oracle AZ

        Well it's happening. We're heading back to Illinois next month for good. Goodbye to roughly 300 nights of clear skies per year. It's been a great run, but it's not enough to keep me here. Tucson has a lot of potential, but many things are headed in the wrong direction. I've addressed that in another blog so I won't go into detail here. 

        The weather forecast the entire week kept going back and forth insofar as cloud cover. I had to wait until that morning before calling the park service and making my reservation. Even then, the skies over my house were at best partly sunny all day. But I paid my money so I would take my chances. 

        I filled out my planner a few days before. There's several Messier objects I wanted to log and I also wanted to take another run at the Horsehead and Witch Head Nebulas. I figured my odds were good with a dark sky and good weather. It was also a prime opportunity to catch the Zodiacal Light, a phenomenon where interplanetary dust on the ecliptic gets illuminated after sunset. ALCON had a good article on that as well as an article detailing a cluster within Canis Major. 

        Skies completely cleared out when I got to Oracle. And the temps felt fairly mild. That was good, as my wife had packed up all my cold weather gear. I had a fleece hoodie and my all-weather windbreaker. Also some BMX gloves. A cooler with 3 cold beers completed the picture. 

        Jupiter made its appearance just before sunset along with 4 moons. Nautical Twilight started taking hold which is when many stars become visual but it isn't quite full dark yet. Sirius and the stars of Orion popped into existence. 

        Just after the sun dipped below the horizon, something to the southeast about 45 degrees up caught my attention. I went through my mental index and determined it wasn't a star or planet. No navigation lights and it wasn't dark enough yet to see a satellite. I twirled the scope in that direction and saw something very unusual. 

What the hell???

        There was a star party in a different area of the park that night, so I thought they may have launched something. The following Monday I checked with a meteorologist I work with who told me it was a weather balloon. It was just high enough to reflect light from the sub-horizon sun. It stayed visible for several minutes before the sun sank low enough for the light to fade away. And they are much, much bigger than they look in the picture. They grow to as much as 45 feet in diameter depending on how high they are. 

        As the night went on, I was able to log most of my Messier objects I had planned for the night. M45 had some very stark contrast so I was confident about B33 and the Witch. Just as I was prepping for those, a car pulled into the lot and circled about before finally parking...with his brights on!!! I kept my head down and my eyes closed although that felt very vulnerable. His lights automatically turned off after what felt like forever but my night vision was toast. So I settled on getting a look at NGC 2362. It's a very rich star cluster and is really easy to locate. 

NCG 2362 in Canis Major

        I brought "Turn Left at Orion" with me as I had some more targets bookmarked. They were all in Gemini, which was at Zenith by that part of the night, requiring some bodily contortion to aim and view. I was unsuccessful. The temps had also dropped considerably by then and my fingers were becoming unable to even operate a pencil. Plus another car had joined the last one and they were just sitting inside. It was creeping me out frankly so I decided to call it. 

        2 1/2 hours wasn't a bad night and I found most of what I sought out. I hated to walk away since I knew I would not be back. The view was nothing short of intoxicating and even naked eye sights were amazing. I only hope my experience in Illinois is as rewarding. I'm hoping to connect with other like-minded astronomers and to learn from them as I adapt to my new environs. 

Final night in Oracle

        See you on the other side!