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(ATMoB:Discuss) Sunglow October

I'll be going to Sunglow during October 11-21.
I'm looking for one male to share a double with.
Please email if interested.

Matt

>Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 19:13:44 -0400
>To: Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston <atmob-discuss ^a^ jovian dot com>
>From: Matt BenDaniel <matt>
>
>Here is a trip report from my visit to Sunglow Ranch in Arizona during 5/16-26.
>
>Sunglow Ranch is located in Pearce, Arizona, which is in the Southeast corner of the state, in the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains.  It is at latitude 32 and altitude 5300 feet.  The ranch seems to have been "astronomically discovered" by Wil Milan and Tony Hallas a few years ago.  It has less than a dozen casita style rooms.  They serve optional meals that were very good.  The staff are very friendly and helpful.  When you stand on the grounds and look into the surrounding hills, you see virtually no other sign of any human habitation, day or night.  I found that exceptionally refreshing.
>
>The observing field is a gentle grass/dirt slope on the South side of the ranch.  Unfortunately they have no pads (nor do they rent equipment), but you can run an extension cord out there.  Sunglow is owned by ATMoB member Mitchel Sayare.
>
>Sunglow is the darkest place I've ever been, even darker than New Mexico Skies.  Naked eye objects included the zodiacal band, gegenschein, North America Nebula, and M33.  M51 was a binocular object even during twilight.  There is only a very faint glow from Douglas, a small town 40 miles away.  In part due to low humidity, the transparency was a 6 to 8 out of 10, and the limiting visual magnitude was better than 7.0, although personally I could only see down to mag 6.4.  We measured the sky glow using an algorithm for the ST-4 and came out with an average of 21 mags per arc second squared.  The seeing was not quite as good, ranging from 4 to 7 out of 10.
>
>It rained two days that we were there, but the other 8 nights were all darker/clearer than is possible anywhere I know of in New England.  FYI during July-September are the Summer monsoons.
>
>Daytime activities include Chiricahua Park w/Massai Point, horse riding, etc.  However, frankly, there may not be enough there to fully occupy non-astronomical friends/family.  Although astronomers represent a minority of Sunglow's guests, most of the guests observed low-light protocol unprompted.
>
>Other guests there included Tom Polakis, Peter Ceravolo, Rajiv Gupta, Ron Wodaski, Chris Cook, Bernie Sanden, and Jim Janusz.  The local visual observers had Dobs ranging from 10" to 20".  You cannot believe how awesome Omega Centauri is in a 16" Dob; it literally took me a while to fully recover my night vision.
>
>I planned this trip months in advanced for film astrophotography exclusively.  I brought a 5-inch refractor and an equatorial mount.  You can see some of the resulting images at http://people.ne.mediaone dawt net/mbendaniel/gallery/astro/new.html
>FYI I'll be going back to Sunglow in October.
>
>For more info on Sunglow, see http://www.sunglowranch dot com
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