Saturday night, October 12^th was like most other Ransom Canyon evenings — lots of fun.  When I arrived Tom Heisey was setup with his Celestron Edge 8 and AVX mount, Gary was there but didn't have a scope, and Scott & Lesley were also there, Scott with his NexStar 8SE.  Albert arrived not long after myself with his 8" Orion dob.  Patrice was there, as well, to take in everything.  And we had a new fellow show up, Elijah, with a new Apertura 8" dob.  Didn't see the comet on the 12^th, but the Meadow at Ransom Canyon is down in a bowl and that evening the comet was particularly low and close to the sun.  Fortunately we had visitors to see what was up.  A mother and daughter pair were there for the first time and enjoyed Albert's view of Arcturus changing colors at the western horizon.  I recall the 2-½ days past First Quarter Moon, Albireo, Saturn, NGC 457 the ET Cluster, the Double Double, and a very washed out Andromeda Galaxy, the moon quite bright for galaxies.  Our skies were overall clear, but the seeing did not match the clarity, with a lot of upper atmospheric turbulence making the splitting of the Double Double troublesome, and something I only achieved at high power in my 102mm refractor, something that should have been easy at medium power on a more stable evening.

On Monday evening, the 14^th, my elder daughter and I went over to the east side of the nearby elementary school from our house to get as uninterrupted a view of the western horizon as we could to hopefully see Comet Purple Mountain.  We were not to be disappointed.  Although not bright, the comet was a naked-eye object, and visually very close to what she caught, handheld, in her iPhone 14 Plus, between, and slightly above a line from Venus to Acrturus (arc to Arcturus!)   My patient, steady-of-hand daughter was able to snap off the next shot holding the camera lens above the eyepiece of my AT80ED scope with AT 28mm UWA.  We paused for a selfie at home after our adventure ...
        

Two nights later, on Wednesday the 16^th, went out again, solo, with my trusty AT80ED which I sorely needed, because naked-eye, the comet was nowhere to be seen.  Was able to find it in the scope, but my shot wasn't as good as Maya's.  Oh well ...
  

Thursday night the 17^th was our monthly South Plains Astronomy Club meeting, and what an interesting meeting it was!  Usually, we just have a talk, which are usually informative, mind you, but for this meeting we centered on newtonian collimation (ha! 😀).  Club VP Tom went over the techniques using different schemes, but covered everything well in his slideshow, then we got down to tacks doing it.  I had brought my Celestron 130 SLT tube on the AZ-5 mount, Farpoint secondary laser collimator and collimation cap.  Tom had a number of tools, including led artificial stars, and we went about collimating not only our scopes, but also Elijah's Apertura 8 and Mark Smith's 6" Meade Schmidt Newtonian.  Besides being educational, it was just plain fun.

Saturday the 26^th Zach and Kelly invited us out to their Casita del Llano in north Lynn County for an evening under the dark skies south of the Lubbock and Wolfforth light domes.  Tom and Gary had gone to the darker skies of the Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge, which is a very nice place to go, but a 70 minute drive from Lubbock, whereas the Casita del Llano is 20 minutes closer roundtrip.  Even though it was Saturday and I'd had one day to catch up on sleep, I was still a little tired on Saturday and just didn't quite feel up to the 140 minute drive to Muleshoe and back.  Fortunately, the skies at the Casita del Llano, tho not as good as Muleshoe, are still quite nice.  Club Secretary Patrice beat me there, and Yifan was also there and impressed at the Milky Way's glowing from Sagittarius up toward Cygnus.  Although not visible by the time one gets north to Cassiopeia, given the light domes of Lubbock and Wolfforth, it is impressive just the same.  Yifan is making great strides with his astrophotographic efforts, but was unaware of the "Teapot" asterism of Sagittarius, nor were two of Kelly's co-workers and a spouse there to take in the night, so with my laser pointer connected the dots of stars in the asterism against the night sky.  Yifan's continually improving astrophotography skills helped record the beauty of the evening, with my klutzy laser pointing an example of what NOT to do with astrophotography going on.
      Of course we saw plenty of other targets.  Michael Barnett had a Meade 8" SCT out but the drive was dead due to a malfunctioning battery, but also had his fully functional Celestron 10" push-to StarSense dob and nice, mounted 20x80 binoculars.  I had my AT102ED refractor, and Yifan his ZWO Seestar S50.  Venus was an early catch for Michael in the evening, which I unfortunately missed, busy setting up my equipment when he was showing the big gibbous disk to folks.  Michael found Comet Purple Mountain in his binoculars first, and from there we eventually put it into our scopes, refractor and dob, and Yifan his Seestar S50 with the results on this page.  Saturn was, of course, a crowd pleaser, as the King of Titans always is, very nice in my refractor and even better in Michael's Meade 8" SCT.  Titan and Rhea draped opposite sides of Saturn, while I could make out Dione and Enceladus, faintly, in the 8" SCT, likewise draped correspondingly about the Ringed Planet.

As impressive as the Milky Way, Saturn and Comet Purple Mountain were, we managed to take in other celestial delights.  The Pleiades, M45, is a nice catch in a widefield refractor, so the 3.27° True Field of View with the AT28UWA eyepiece framed things nicely, and also did double duty on the Andromeda Galaxy complex, M31-M32-M110.  M110 was awfully faint, but just there.  M13, the Great Hercules Cluster, was alright in my 4" refractor, although Michael's 10" dob was the best instrument on the field for that target.  Globular Clusters respond to aperture, the more the merrier the vista.  Caught IC 4665, the open cluster in the upper left portion of Ophiucus, when looking for the comet, relatively nearby a few degrees away.  Many thanks to Stephen Tonkin for his excellent image of the cluster below.  The VERY tight Double Double, Epsilon Lyrae, just split with the 5mm Nagler T6 in my AT 102ED at 143 power.  Another crowd pleaser was the Coathanger cluster asterism, and as professional science educator Janine Bonham's website explains, goes by three names — Al Sufi's Cluster, Brocchi's Cluster, and Collinder 399.  I was unaware of Persian astronomer Al Sufi's description in his book on fixed stars in 964 AD, but certainly understand this since I've seen it myself naked-eye at Ransom Canyon, of all places, not really a dark sky location.
     

The Ring Nebula, M57, was well-received, artfully photographed below by Finnish photographer J-P Metsavainio, while M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, was taken by EPinNC from CloudyNights.com, and also enjoyed by us lucky earthbound spectators.  We split double star Almach, Gamma Andromedae, finishing up the constellation with Mirach's Ghost, NGC 404, an isolated dwarf lenticular galaxy 10 million light years away and much farther than the mere 197 light years distant Mirach, Beta Andromedae — 7 arcminutes from NGC 404 in our line of sight.  These two hand sketches are from the talented Jeremy Perez.
           

Yifan was not through imaging, and spent more time on NGC 7000, the North American Nebula, than any other object, with results that looked much better than my telescope provided.  I have seen NGC 7000 better before visually, perhaps not in a 4" refractor, but better, the skies in northern Lynn county have to contend with more light pollution than Muleshoe, and Cygnus, northwest, can be more bothered by it.  Just the same, Yifan persevered and produced this image.  After that, we looked at the Veil Nebula in Cygnus.  Special thanks to Cindy Krach for allowing me to use her excellent sketch of this beautiful, 3° wide supernova remnant.
     

The Veil Nebula is awe inspiring to behold in a telescope, and the scopes we had were a nigh perfect combo Saturday night the 26^th, with my 4" refractor having just enough TFOV to put the whole thing into the 2" 28mm UWA with O-3 filter, but Michael's 10", though only able to put portions in the eyepiece at a time, delivering phenomenal detail of the various segments of the Veil.  It was after 11 PM, and we were getting cold and tired, so decided to pack it in.  Now, it's pretty dark at Zach and Kelly's, but Michael brought a drone and launched it about 25 feet above our heads, hovering, while he turned on an amazingly bright LED to shine down upon our teardown process, effectively creating a streetlight for us on the dusty plain.  Sure made teardown a breeze, and Michael, aka Mr. Gadget, came through for us.

We had another fantastic night at Casita del Llano, Zach and Kelly always welcoming, to close out a very active, fun month of astronomy on the South Plains.  Please join us when you can, and visit our Astronomy Club website when you get the chance.