Another month has flown by – we’re now more than halfway through 2023. It’s officially summer and the heat is on in the Valley of the Sun. Over the past two weeks, we’ve only had one day that didn’t reach triple digits – the high was 99 degrees on June 23rd.
We escaped the heat for a week while we had a housesit near Prescott. It was in an area called Williamson Valley, about 25 miles northwest of downtown Prescott. The elevation was more than 5,000 feet above sea level and the temperatures were nearly 20 degrees cooler than the Phoenix metro area. We were there from June 25th to July 1st.
The house was a beautiful custom home on a 12-acre lot located on a private road. All of the houses there were custom-built on large lots. Housesitting included caring for Riley, a 10-year-old terrier mix. He was a very well-behaved dog and Donna enjoyed hiking with him in the national forest – there was a trailhead less than 1/2 mile away. She was happy for some R & R having just returned from moving her mom into assisted living in Vermont. After her morning hike with Riley, she tended to the raised bed vegetable garden and also spent an hour every day deadheading more than 20 rose bushes in the backyard. Then she’d spend the afternoon reading or practicing clarinet.
The wind would kick up every day with gusts of 20-25 mph. But sometime around 6 or 7pm, it would switch off and only a light breeze of 2-5 mph would blow. This was ideal for astrophotography – also the dark Bortle 3 skies were awesome. The Bortle scale for light pollution runs from 1 to 9, with 1 being a dark, wilderness type night sky with no artificial light. A 9 would be an inner-city area with a light dome of artificial light. The only issue I had to deal with was the moon – it was waxing and nearly full. The moon was bright enough to cast distinct shadows.
We drove into town on Monday. We went to the old downtown area known as Whiskey Row. We had lunch at the oldest saloon in Arizona – the Palace Restaurant and Saloon. It opened in 1877 and was rebuilt after a fire swept through Whiskey Row in 1900. In the late 1800s, it was a rough and tumble place. Wyatt Earp frequented the Palace and they say he killed two men in gunfights behind the saloon. His brother Virgil lived in Prescott. Doc Holliday was another patron and they say he had a winning streak playing poker on Whiskey Row and pocketed $10,000 – quite a haul in those times. We enjoyed the lunch and the ambiance of the old saloon.
I had a couple of astrophotography targets in mind for our stay. Once I realized how bright the moon was, I had to revise my plan. One of my tentative targets was too close to the bright moon.
The house had an attached three-car garage and a separate detached two-car garage. I set up my APM 140-980 refractor in the driveway in front of the detached garage. The really nice thing about this very private property was that I could leave my gear set up for the duration of the stay. No need to tear it down, pack it away and reset it again the next night. I just covered it with a ‘scope cover I bought on Amazon.
The first three nights I captured the Dumbbell Nebula (M27). It was in the eastern sky while the moon was southwest. I recorded more than six hours of data captured in 120-second exposures. I think this is the most time I’ve had on any target. Unfortunately, I failed to bring my narrow band filter and had to use a broadband filter instead. The narrow band filter would have captured more vivid coloration of the hydrogen and oxygen gases.
The Dumbbell Nebula is a planetary nebula – it’s made up of gases in a spherical (planet-like) shape around a central star. It’s 1,360 light years away from earth.
I planned to switch to my second target on Wednesday night, but I had tracking problems with my mount and had to quit the session. Thursday morning, I went in search of a new battery for the Gemini mount controller. I had already opened up the mount and looked for a mechanical issue. Common wisdom says when you can’t explain why the Gemini controlled mount is acting up, replace the CR2450 battery. Did I mention the remoteness of this property? I lucked out and found a battery at Walgreen’s (my second stop after Ace hardware) in Chino Valley – about 15 miles away.
The battery didn’t fix it. I took the covers off the worm-gear assemblies and found the problem on the right ascension worm. The bearing block on the worm had worked loose and was allowing play in the assembly. I don’t know how I missed it earlier. I re-adjusted it and re-assembled everything and it looked good.
Thursday night I started imaging the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946). I thought Fireworks was an appropriate target as we headed into the Fourth of July weekend. The Fireworks Galaxy is a medium-sized, face-on spiral galaxy about 22 million light years away from earth. It’s considered to be a challenging target for experienced astrophotographers. I wanted to take advantage of the dark skies and try to capture it. It was north-northwest of our location.
I shot 120-second exposures on Thursday night and then shot 150-second exposures on Friday night. The mount was back to guiding great and I ended up with just over five hours of total captured data. I’m happy with the result.
There were so many stars visible in the dark sky – my software indicated over 2,000 stars visible in the Dumbbell Nebula photo and more than 1,000 stars in the Fireworks Galaxy photo.
On Saturday morning, Donna did some light cleaning and housekeeping while I packed our luggage, miscellaneous kitchen items we’d brought and my astronomy gear in the Jeep Compass. I should mention the Jeep performed flawlessly, giving us 30 miles per gallon on the way up and over 32 miles per gallon on the return trip. Overall, it was a very enjoyable week, but we were glad to be back home. Riley (the dog) was an early riser, so I was lacking sleep during our stay.
Last night, we took the golf cart over to the South Point recreation building here at Viewpoint and watched fireworks from the second floor deck. We had 360-degree views of fireworks. Donna is back on the tennis courts – they play early, starting at 6:30am so they can finish before it gets too hot.
Triple digit highs will be the norm for the next couple of months. Our next housesit isn’t until the end of August when we’re scheduled to go to Cortez, CO. Donna will be flying to Cincinnati in a couple of weeks for a band camp to play her clarinet. Then she’ll fly to Florida to visit her sister before returning here. I’ll be trying to beat the heat with Ozark the cat here in Mesa.