A Night at Fly Gap

By John Reed

As we bounced along the dirt road that winds up Fly Gap Mountain, I recalled how Mack Luffman had said that Sky Gap was really a better name for our favorite observing site.  It really is a gap between Arkansas' population centers, light pollution, and to an extent its haze.  About as ideal a site to explore the heavens as any around.  The site itself is part of the Ozark National Forest: a clearing made to supply deer with winter forage.  It isn't much, just a rough field of tall weeds that sometimes have to cut to make a small area to set up the telescopes.  This particular night was no exception.

My headlights illuminated the field as I pulled up, making it super bright in comparison to the pitch black sky above.  The sounds of insects were almost deafening with their various chirpings and buzzings.  The air was a little cool and the sky seemed to be clear.  It was going to be a good night.

We began the chore of setting up all the equipment.  There were four of us: Eliot Neal, John Fitzgerald, Mark Habenicht and myself.  With everyone hauling cradles, tubes, and hacking up weeds we soon had things arranged so that I could turn out my headlights.  With the flick of a switch the Universe appeared.  At first the process of night adaptation was swift, but my eyes seemed to continue to gather more light for several minutes.

The sky at Fly Gap is difficult to describe.  Imagine gray black velvet with sparkling chips of diamond strewn upon it.  The zenith was incredible with Cygnus a shimmering cross encrusted with jewels.  The Milkyway was straight up, dividing the sky in two equal parts, making it look very dome like.  It looked somewhat like the mouth of a giant clam not quite closed as seen from within -- perhaps the earth itself being a pearl imbedded in this celestial brachiopod which in turn floats in a more brilliant milky white cosmos beyond.  This irregular mouth extended from horizon to horizon, sometimes very wide, sometimes almost nonexistent.

Of course we warmed up with the easy showpiece objects: the Ring Nebula, the Dumbell Nebula, M-13 the Hercules Cluster, and M-11 the Flying Duck Cluster.  But we soon went for more elusive prey.  Eliot's 12.5" newtonian caught the Veil Nebula and framed the "tornado" perfectly.  My 10" almost resolved M-33 the Pinwheel Galaxy into spiral arms.  John's 8" displayed the Helix Nebula as a smoky doughnut: a dim enlargement of the more popular Ring Nebula.  We continued scanning the Skalnate Pleaso for galaxies, planetary nebula, and other increasingly difficult objects, when Eliot mentioned Stephan's Quintet.

I was immediately interested as galaxies have always been my favorite type of object, especially the difficult, faint ones.  The Quintet is a galaxy cluster located about ½ degree south southwest of the unobtrusive galaxy NGC-7331 in Pegusus (see page 395 of the October Sky and Telescope).  Eliot and I set out to first find 7331 and then, hopefully, make a short "eyepiece hop" to the Quintet.  I had just found 7331 as a tiny elliptical pool of light in my 40mm eyepiece when Eliot announced be had found the galaxy cluster itself.  I was a bit perturbed he beat me to it, but he always has been a fast object finder.  I abandoned my scope, leaving the galaxy to drift out of the field-of-view, and lined up at the 12.5".  When my turn came to look I examined the field carefully, using all the eye tricks one learns in this unusual hobby.  At first all I saw was 7331, but after looking at a photograph of the field, I looked again south of the small, oval spiral.  There they were tiny (barely larger than the stars around them), faint, and indistinct, but definitely there.  A chill went up my spine as I gazed at that dim light -- that old, old light.  This was probably the most distant object I had ever seen.  Truly deep sky.  The light from these galaxies left them when dinosaurs first walked the earth and entered my eye three to four hundred million years later.  It made me realize why I liked this peculiar hobby so much.

All the way back while driving down lonely, dark highway 23 I played that moment over and over in my mind, thinking how great it would be the next time we went to Sky...I mean Fly Gap.