On Thursday, Senior Editor Michael Bakich and I traveled to Tucson and
then made the 3-hour drive to Rancho Hidalgo near Animas, New
Mexico. We spent a couple days with a stellar array of amateur
astronomers at the site, flummoxed by a very unusual event for this
time of year — two straight cloudy nights. A weird, early season,
monsoon-type flow was pushing clouds up from the south.
See more pictures from Dave and Michael's trip to Rancho Hidalgo.
On Saturday, our luck changed. We awakened to deep blue skies with a
couple of scattered cumulus here and there — no big deal. Our group
included Gene Turner, Loy Guzman, Michael, Ken and Rose Huggett of
Solarscope on the Isle of Man, United Kingdom, Ohio educators Gloria Dunnivan of
Kent State University and John Hairston, and several others. We trekked
up to a site near the Arizona Sky Village (ASV), Gene’s development across
the Arizona border, and drove our four-wheel-drive jeeps up a steep
mountain road to arrive at the ASV’s 24-inch observatory dome site, at
more than 6,000 feet elevation. Here we enjoyed viewing the scope
itself and set up a Tele Vue apo, attached one of Ken Huggett’s amazing
H-alpha filters, and checked out the Sun. It was an amazingly crisp
sight, with little finger prominences and a flare visible with sharp
details on the photosphere. It was such a terrific sight that deep-sky
observers like Michael and I were awestruck!
We are hopeful that tonight we’ll get a great, dark sky and will set up
the 30-inch telescope for a long session of viewing odd and sundry
deep-sky objects. Stay tuned.