Joy at Northern Nights Star Fest 2021

A participant at Northern Nights Star Fest uses a filtered computer to monitor the progress of a photo taken through his telescope. Red filters preserve night vision. No white lights are allowed on the observing field during the event. Ben Huset 

Last weekend I attended the 10th annual Northern Nights Star Fest (NNSF) held by the Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS). Members flee light-polluted backyards and head north to Long Lake Conservation Center in north-central Minnesota to revel in dark skies. I spoke at the event and had the time of my life.

We've all been a little starved of company the past year and a half because of COVID-19 fears. Getting together with other amateur astronomers for face-to-face conversation and to share the night sky was balm for all. I'm grateful the MAS provided the opportunity.

MAS member Jerry Jones speaks Friday night about the work of Edward Pickering and the women at Harvard College Observatory to elucidate the properties of stars through their spectra. Bob King

After dinner that evening, club member Jerry Jones gave a delightful talk about how a group of women, known as "computers" at Harvard College Observatory were instrumental more than 100 years ago in classifying the stars. Several became famous astronomers including Henrietta Swan Leavitt, whose discovery of the period luminosity relationship led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of how truly enormous the universe is. 

Mark Job (right), MAS president, talks with Ken Hugill during the remote observing session where Job shared live photos taken with a telescope in Texas. One of the targets was the globular star cluster projected on the screen above. Bob King

It never cleared that night but no matter. An enthusiastic Mark Job, president of the society, opened up his laptop in the lecture room and logged in to start a "remote" observing session. Job owns a small observatory near the little town of Llano, Texas, where the sky was cloudless that evening. Like a modern day Captain Kirk at the helm of his own personal starship, he tapped keys to open the observatory roof and point the telescope at anything we wanted to see. 

NGC 6946, nicknamed the Fireworks Galaxy, is a multi-armed spiral galaxy that straddles the border between the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus. Jim Misti

The 20 or so present offered up some favorite targets like the big globular cluster M13, the Cat's Eye Nebula and the multi-armed spiral galaxy NGC 6946 in Cepheus. I suggested a comet and a recent supernova. Each time, the 5.1-inch refracting telescope delivered a preliminary image in about a minute and a final, richly detailed photo in 5 minutes. The crowd responded with oohs and aahs and occasional applause. 

I'm a dedicated visual observer and willing to freeze or offer sacrificial blood to hungry mosquitos if it means teasing out a spiral arm in a galaxy through my telescope. But you know, I liked this. The audience participation, near real-time images and comfort made for a winning combination — the astronomical equivalent of watching a TV football game with your buddies. Thanks for the ride, Mark. May you live long and prosper. 

The midnight snack is a tradition at many star parties. A time to take a break and fuel up for more observing and photography during the wee hours. Despite the clouds, the event went on as planned with choices of bagged chips, hot dogs, sandwich fixings, cheese, fruit and coffee. For amateur astronomers, staying up late quickly becomes second nature. We sat and talked till past 1:30.

Allie holds her daughter Avani (a name that means 'Earth' in Sanskrit) during brunch at NNSF 2021. Ben Huset

Since it's assumed you'll be getting to bed late and waking late, no breakfast is served the following morning. Instead, brunch starts at 11:30. After the meal we listened to an excellent talk about NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter from the club's Dave Falkner. Did you know that Juno photographed lightning in Jupiter's polar clouds or that the Great Red Spot gets warmer the deeper down you go? 

Dave Falkner shares the latest results from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter. Ben Huset

Falkner is an author as well as a NASA Solar System Ambassador who shares his enthusiasm for space at numerous events. His latest book, Stories of Astronomers and Their Stars, will be published this fall. Watch for it on Amazon.

I took a much needed nap Saturday afternoon in preparation for what looked to be a clear night. Following dinner I presented a program on the Andromeda Galaxy and all the wonderful things you can see there starting with the naked eye and proceeding to larger telescopes.

Suresh Sreenivasan of Hopkins, Minn. sets up his telescopes for a night of astrophotography on the grounds of Long Lake Conservation Center near McGregor, Minn. Bob King

That night we began observing around 8:30 p.m., when Venus and Jupiter first appeared at dusk. The night looked and felt perfect, but soon clouds arrived and even a few drops of rain. We wrestled with the meteorological gods for the next couple hours while trying to make best use of occasional "sucker holes" — clearings that offered occasional, brief glimpses of the stars. 

A battery of light-seeking instruments on the observing field stands ready for duty as soon as the sky gets dark. Suresh Sreenivasan

Finally, around 11, it cleared for good and we got serious about observing and photographing. Well, not that serious. There was plenty of laughter and out-loud amazement at what the telescopes showed. Kevin Nasal, with the Neville Public Museum Astronomical Society (Green Bay, Wis.), broke his distance record for most remote quasar observed (9.5 billion light-years!) and generously offered anyone a look at the pinpoint of light. 

Dave Falkner stands next to the 30-inch Dobsonian reflecting telescope that provided some of the most awe-inspiring sights of the night. Bob King

Others shared wonderful views of the Jupiter, Saturn, star clusters, nebulae and several comets through their instruments. While people brought scopes of all sizes to the party, most of us gathered around the bigger ones in the 14 to 18-inch range. Rarely do we get the opportunity to look through these hefty "light buckets." Bigger telescopes gather so more light and reveal stunning detail in deep-sky objects. At times the views were almost photographic, especially in the largest instruments — a 25-inch (64-cm) and two 30-inch (76-cm) Dobsonian reflectors.

Ben Huset demonstrates the brilliant "office chair" telescope designed by Mark Boyd of the MAS. The scope features a 7-inch mirror and an eyepiece that sticks out from the center of the tube. Once seated in the chair, the eyepiece remains at eye level no matter where the telescope is pointed. You use your feet to spin the chair and your hand to adjust the telescope's altitude. Bob King

Normally, I'd finish up an observing session around 1 a.m. but not this time. One after another someone would call out a galaxy or a nebula, and I'd stroll over for a look. I saw two pretty comets and their delicate tails (67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and 4P/Faye), Kevin's quasar and a rock-me-to-the-core view of the massive supernova remnant in Cygnus called the Veil Nebula. Through the 30-incher, so many nebulous tendrils and twiggy bits jumped into view I almost lost my place.

Suresh Sreenivasan stacked multiple exposures taken with his 10" f/8 Ritchey-Chretien telescope on September 5, 2021 to create this photo of the spiral galaxy M74 in Pisces. Suresh Sreenivasan

While visual observers checked off things they've been longing to see (taking notes and making sketches), a fleet of astrophotographers busied themselves with imaging comets, nebulae and star clusters. Rodrigo Roesch of the Green Bay club dedicated one telescope to photographing the Andromeda Galaxy the entire night. He hoped to capture rarely seen faint clouds of interstellar dust hovering around the galaxy's perimeter. 

The planetary nebula NGC 1535, also called Cleopatra's Eye, was a sight to behold through the 30-inch reflector. The original sun-like star ejected its atmosphere into space to form the nebula, leaving behind its blazing core called a white dwarf. Ultraviolet light emitted by the dwarf makes the gases fluoresce. Sketch made in Photoshop. Bob King

By 3 a.m. my feet started to hurt from standing, but the sky was so dark and the telescopic sights so amazing I went for broke. About this time I met Brandon Hamil, an enthusiastic amateur from Dallas, Texas who knew his way around the 30-inch telescope. We spent the next two hours-plus pointing at one thing after another, each time ascending the tall ladder to the eyepiece for mouthwatering views. We soaked in views of star clusters and nebulae in the Triangulum Galaxy, the weird ear-like form of the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888), the Ring Nebula (and its additional outer, wreath-like ring), the Andromeda Galaxy, the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635 — it really did look like a bubble!) and more.

The Crab Nebula in Taurus is the expanding cloud of debris formed in the wake of a supernova explosion nearly a millennium ago. Near the cloud's center is the rapidly spinning remnant of the original supergiant star called a pulsar. I traced the path I took to find the pulsar starting with the pair of stars on the nebula's northern edge. North is up. Bob King

Two objects really caught our attention — the elegant, double-shelled planetary nebula NGC 1535 in Eridanus and the Crab Nebula. Some sights make you shout out loud when you see them in a large telescope, but I felt a hushed awe at the sight of the Crab pulsar, an object I never imagined I'd get to meet eye to eye. 

The nebula is the expanding cloud of glowing gas and dust produced when a supergiant star exploded as a supernova in 1054 A.D. It also left behind a tiny ember just 12.4 miles across called a neutron star, a super-dense spinning ball of neutrons that was originally the star's core. A teaspoon of neutron star material weighs about a billion tons! Most neutron stars also spin rapidly — the Crab's star at 33 times a second — and emit a pulse of light every rotation similar to a lighthouse beacon. For that reason they're also known as pulsars.

I've sought the Crab pulsar before in my 15-inch scope with no luck (it's magnitude 16.5, faint!) but finally spotted the tiny object in the 30-inch at a magnification of 572x at around 4:30 a.m. that Sunday morning. We do astronomy for many reasons. I like the direct connection to the cosmos that comes through sky-gazing as well as the sensation of traveling across time. For me, seeing the pulsar zoomed me straight back to 1054 to one of the most catastrophic events in the galaxy. For a few moments it felt like being there.

The moon reflects on Long Lake in morning twilight. Bob King

A few of us continued observing right on through twilight as Orion and Sirius climbed up the southeastern sky. On the way back to my bed at 5:30 a.m. one last thing caught my eye. Bright and plain in the eastern sky shined a smile of a moon, its reflection blurred by a gentle wind moving over Long Lake. I was finally home after a long night's journey.

Brian Chopp, with the Green Bay club, writes down notes about what he observed in his telescope Saturday night. Bob King